Eruditorum Press

We don’t need AI to hallucinate.

Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

A Drawling Twang in a Forbidden Tongue (The Last War in Albion Part 84: Night Raven, Marvelman)

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This is the twelfth of fifteen parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Nine, focusing on Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta for Warrior (in effect, Books One and Two of the DC Comics collection). An omnibus of all fifteen parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in a collected edition, along with the eventual completion of the story. UK-based readers can buy it here.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: One of the most immediate antecedents of V for Vendetta was Night Raven, a noir strip from Dez Skinn’s Hulk Comics originally created by Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd, which later became a series of text features in Marvel Super-Heroes and The Daredevils written by Alan Moore, in which the character is infected with a virus created by his nemesis, Yi Yang, which has the effect of both rendering him immortal and causing him constant and excruciating pain.

“It was a voice of thunder that answered his question – a drawling twang in a forbidden tongue we’d only ever heard in banned movie reels.” – Grant Morrison, Multiversity: Mastermen
Figure 644: Night Raven causes the antagonists to kill their
own man by putting a Night Raven mask on one of them.
 (Written by Steve Parkhouse, art by David Lloyd, from
Hulk Comic #1, 1979)
Over the course of Moore’s stories, Night Raven suffers from the disease until he finally obtains a cure, at which point he realizes that Yi Yang had only done all of this to give herself an enemy. (“How does an immortal kill herself,” he has Night Raven ponder in the story where he’s finally cured. “She sets about creating a weapon, perhaps unconsciously, responding to that barely audible voice inside her that pleads for extinction. She creates a weapon that might just be able to kill her.”) This also let Moore gradually move the setting up to the present day, which has obvious appeal to anyone seeking to use the character in future stories since it enables teaming him up with other characters in the Marvel stable. Having accomplished this, however, and with Moore backing away from Marvel UK work due to his dissatisfaction with Bernie Jaye’s dismissal, Moore, again characteristically, handed the text pieces over to Jamie Delano, giving him his first professional credit. 
Figure 645: V causes the antagonists to kill their own man
by putting a Guy Fawkes mask on one of them. (Written by
Alan Moore, art by David Lloyd, from “The Vacation,” in
Warrior #18, 1984)
V for Vendetta, however, fell a long way from Night Raven, although certainly similarities were maintained, most obviously the faceless and implacable nature of the lead characters, although V eventually did get the origin story that Night Raven lacked. The most obvious of these is the change in setting from the 1930s to the present day – a change prompted by Lloyd’s request to not have to keep doing a bunch of historical reference.
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Comics Reviews (February 18th, 2015)

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First off, as alluded to on Saturday, I’ve got the first of the episode commentaries from the old William Hartnell Second Edition Kickstarter ready. Helping bail me out when it became evident that me on my own was not interesting listening is Jack Graham, so if the two of us talking about the first episode of The Rescue sounds fun, well, here it is. (That’s a Dropbox link – I should have enough bandwidth there for anyone who wants it to download it, but if problems arise, let me know and I’ll figure some new hosting out.) We’ll tackle episode two next week. We’re still working out how best to do these and what they should be like, so please, comments are very much welcome, both to give us an idea of how much actual interest there is for this and to help us fine-tune it.

Second, comics! Worst to best of what I bought.

Moon Knight #12

There’s a frustrating evaporation of interesting ethics here, with the character arguing for a particular and extreme moral position turning out to have been corrupt and evil all along. The rest of the plot lines are resolved with a whimper. It’s been a while since Brian Wood impressed, hasn’t it? All told, they should have just let Warren Ellis do this as a miniseries. And now they’re going to… Cullen Bunn? Jeez. I mean, Bunn isn’t a bad writer, but when your book has gone from bracing formalist experiments with Warren Ellis to Cullen Bunn… well, you’ve certainly managed to lose the point of your existence as a book. Dropping this. Frankly, in hindsight, I should have trusted my instincts and dropped it after #6.

Fables #149

The main story is seventeen pages long. The final issue isn’t even solicited yet, but is apparently just going to be an entire trade paperback, which does kind of make the buildup over the course of this arc frustrating – the reality is that this isn’t the final arc and never has been. In any case, I find the months gap before the finale frustrating, and I did the whole “final installment is a surprise book” first, so, really, I’m just ready to be done with the Fables era of my life.

Batgirl #39

Somewhat workmanlike for this series – less playing with an inventive premise and more putting pieces in place for a big pre-Convergence finale. But still fun, and it’s nice to see this vision of the book do something with the Barbara/Dinah relationship.

Multiversity: Mastermen

Unfortunately, it turns out that having Jim Lee draw Hitler reading Superman comics on the toilet was Grant Morrison’s best idea for this issue, and that it turns into an exercise in connecting obvious dots shortly thereafter. Multiversity has been fun at times, but I have to say, I’m glad to see it finally getting to the conclusion after this, if only because I’m really interested in Morrison’s magical ethics here.

Silver Surfer #9

Very much the middle chapter of a story, which is fine, but in a book like this something of a downer – it doesn’t introduce any new bonkers ideas, and it doesn’t pay off any of the ones it has.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.02: The Kingsroad

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones is kindly funded by 141 patrons at Patreon. If you enjoy it and this blog in general, please consider supporting it. 

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly.
Direwolves of Winterfell: Eddard Stark, Catelyn Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Robb Stark, Bran Stark
Stags of Winterfell: Robert Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon
Lions of Winterfell: Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Sandor Clegane, and Tyrion Lannister
Dragons of Vaes Dothrak: Daenerys Targaryen, Viserys Targaryen
Fleurs de lis of Vaes Dothrak : Jorah Mormont
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
King’s Landing is empty.
The episode is in eleven parts. The first runs three minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The first shot is a long line of Dothraki marching across the vast grassy plains. 
The second runs sixteen minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is via dialogue and image, from Viserys and Jorah talking about Eddard Stark and a shot of horses to a shot of dogs in Winterfell. The cliffhanger is resolved seven minutes in, when Tyrion announces that Bran is expected to survive. 
The third runs three minutes and is set along the Kingsroad south of Winterfell. The transition is via character, the previous scene ending with Ned riding off and cutting ahead to Ned and Robert, and by dialogue, with the previous scene ending with Ned and Jon Snow parting for the last time to Robert and Ned talking about Jon’s mother. 
The fourth runs one minute and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is via dialogue with Robert and Ned talking about the Dothraki and Targaryens to the Dothraki and Targaryens themselves.  
The fifth runs three minutes and is set along the Kingsroad north of Winterfell. The transition is via image and family, from Daenerys looking at her dragon’s eggs surrounded by candles to Jon Snow sitting by a fire. At the episode’s halfway point, Jon Snow and Tyrion converse by the fire. 
The sixth runs three minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Bran. It features the death of the would-be assassin, mauled by Summer.
The seventh runs two minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by visual, the gore upon Summer’s face to the Dothraki butchering animals to eat.
The eighth runs one minute and is set at the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys to Jon Snow.
The ninth runs four minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, from Benjen to Catelyn.
The tenth runs four minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by hard cut, from Bran in bed to Daenerys being taught how to please Khal Drogo.

The last runs twelve minutes and is in two sections. The first lasts ten minutes and is set on the Kingsroad south of Winterfell. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys and Drogo having torrid sex to Sansa walking through the camp.
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Saturday Waffling (February 14th, 2015)

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Happy Valentine’s Day.

Thanks for joining me for a big week, and going forward. The response to the end of TARDIS Eruditorum has been incredibly gratifying, and I apologize for anyone I didn’t reach back to and thank for the kind words. They’ve all meant a lot.

Going forward, A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones will run on Mondays as an odd sort of countdown, up to the fifth season premiere. On Wednesdays, comics reviews in the mid-days, and I think the episode commentaries from the Eruditorum Kickstarter. So The Rescue Episode One might be a fun thing to watch this weekend. On Fridays, The Last War in Albion will rumble on into the night, and on Saturdays we shall as always shoot the shit, as they say.

This is all assuming the Patreon, currently at $267, remains over $200 a week, with it currently funding A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones. That seems pretty secure, but $60 of it is down to a small number of particularly generous patrons, so please, if you can spare a buck a week, it means a lot. I also just opened voting on the monthly bonus post, so if you want to be a rascal and, like, back for a week, vote, pay for Monday’s post, then cancel your pledge, that’s totally fair. This blog and the monthly book royalties basically pay the rent, and it’s greatly appreciated. Even a little bit helps.

Speaking of books, the Logopolis book, now called Recursive Occlusion, is a hair’s breadth away. Kickstarter backers who think you’ve pre-ordered a copy, please do check your Kickstarter messages, there’s a Google form to fill out to get your book.

So, since it is still the big event of the week, I’m curious. What was your favorite TARDIS Eruditorum entry? And, since everybody on the planet inexplicably feels the need to disclaim that they don’t agree with everything I say (as though someone was under any illusion that anyone would agree with everything I say, least of all myself), where did I most infuriate you? Are you an old-timer, like that guy on GallifreyBase this week who keeps going on about how I unfairly hold the past to the ethical standards of the presen when talking about racism in The Celestial Toymaker? Are you a battle-scarred flame warrior from the great Big-Ass Science debate of The Masque of Mandragora? Did I just disappoint you when I was rude to someone? Or were you with me right up until I said Kill the Moon was brilliant?

Actually, wait, just TARDIS Eruditorum. My passion for Kill the Moon is off limits until the Capaldi book comes out. (I’m not even thinking about that book until it’s clear when Capaldi or Moffat are leaving.)

Seriously, though, thank you for all the kind words and for making me a part of your Internet day. It’s a lovely way to make a living, nattering on to you lot.…

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Pale and Sickly Violets (The Last War in Albion Part 83: Enid Blyton, Night Raven)

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This is the eleventh of fifteen parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Nine, focusing on Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta for Warrior (in effect, Books One and Two of the DC Comics collection). An omnibus of all fifteen parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in a collected edition, along with the eventual completion of the story. UK-based readers can buy it here.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Among the influences on V for Vendetta was, perhaps surprisingly, Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, the second book in her series of the same name. Blyton’s prose style was famously condemned for its extremely simplistic style, including by the BBC, who called her a “tenacious second-rater.”

His dirty white gloves were wrapped around her throat, gloves that had whip-steel in them where the fingers ought to be. Her eyes, her beautiful green eyes were starting to bug out, inflated with pain and horror. Death was turning her face into a field of pale and sickly violets.” – Alan Moore, “Night Raven: The Cure”

Figure 635: A tall giraffe galloping like a rocking horse.
This is certainly a harsh assessment, but it is in truth difficult to argue. Consider, for instance, her account of the group’s adventures in the Land of Take-What-You-Want, in which “if you want anything, you can usually get it there for nothing.” At one point, the adventure goes as follows: “‘Do you want a nice fat lion, Jo?’ asked Silky, as a large lion wandered by and licked Silky’s hand. ‘No, thank you,’ said Jo, at once. ’Well, what about a giraffe?’ said Silky. ‘I believe they make fine pets.’ ‘You believe wrong then,’ said Bessie, as a tall giraffe galloped past like a rocking-horse. ‘Nobody in their senses would want to keep a giraffe for a pet.’ ‘Oh, look!’ cried Fanny, as she came to a shop in which stood a great many large and beautiful clocks. ‘Do let’s take a clock back home!’” This is largely par for the course for Blyton.
Figure 636: V reads The Magic Faraway Tree to Evey.
(Written by Alan Moore and Enid Blyton, art by David
Lloyd, from “Violence” in Warrior #9, 1983)
In the 1943 sequel The Magic Faraway Tree, Blyton creates a land not entirely dissimilar to the Land of Take-What-You-Want, the Land of Do-As-You-Please. In it, Jo drives a train, Fanny gets everyone elephants to ride, and Dick (a new character in this book) goes swimming. Then Moon-Face gets an idea for something to do: “‘Let’s dig an ENORMOUS castle!’ cried Moon-Face. ‘Then we can all sit on the top of it when the sea comes up.’ ‘We can’t,’ said Silky, suddenly looking sad. ‘Why not? Why not?’ cried Jo in surprise. ‘Isn’t this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?’ ’Yes,’ said Silky. ‘But it’s time we went back to the Faraway Tree.
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Introducing the Shabcast

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I’m very excited to link you all to the debut of the amazing Jack Graham, he of the brilliant Shabogan Grafitti, as he debuts the first installment of his sporadic podcast, which he’s going to be calling the Shabcast, apparently.

The first installment consists of an appallingly long interview with me (seriously, this thing is as long as a Hobbit film) on all manner of topics, including the end of TARDIS Eruditorum, the start of A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones, the middle of The Last War in Albion, along with a wealth of other strange topics.

You can get it from the Pex Lives folks here (who also had me on last month for The Ribos Operation, and had Jane on this month for Paradise Towers, if for some reason three hours of me and Jack nattering on won’t cover your commute and you need another four hours of podcast). It was a blast to record, and should make a lovely capstone for this week straight of new content. Saturday Waffling will go up tomorrow, of course, and then things will calm down. A bit.

Thanks to Jack for having me, and I wish him the best of luck with the Shabcast as he moves on to actual respectable guests.…

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Comics Reviews (February 11, 2015)

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From worst to best of what I paid money for.

The Amazing Spider-Man #14

Ultimately, this event went wrong for me on the simplest of grounds: it turns out that when half your cast is wearing an identical full-body costume, the story gets kinda hard to follow in spots. In any case, this felt muddy and half-formed, and I’m more interested in the epilogue than I was in the actual conclusion, simply because I expect it’ll be nice to get to character beats and not tableaus of Spiders. That said, the use of Peter Porker was brilliant.

Thor #5

The degree to which I like the new Thor as a character continues to run hard into the degree to which I find the “keeping her identity secret” plot irritating. This is an interesting issue, but consists of setup and moving pieces around the board in a book that’s overdue for some payoff. My patience with it is wearing thin.

Guardians of the Galaxy #24

I was less than enamored with Black Vortex when it was announced, as it’s a crossover affecting three books I buy that flatly requires picking up issues of four books I don’t, plus the two bumper books, and the premise – dark versions of characters – bores the shit out of me, not least because it’s just a conceptual rehash AXIS, which I also didn’t buy. For all of this, I’ve actually rather enjoyed the first two parts of it, though I’m still kind of waiting for the bottom to fall out.

Captain Marvel #12

A solid installment of a book I should probably drop. I feel like everything interesting about this take on Captain Marvel can also be done in Bitch Planet, and more interestingly, leaving this a kind of hollow riff on Marvel’s sci-fi tropes. That said, I really did enjoy this one pretty well. Carol’s move with the shields was cheeky sci-fi fun.

All-New X-Men #36

Hallelujah, the misbegotten Ultimate Universe crossover is over. Clearly this proved a tricky arc for the book, since it’s now going to get released out of order to get its Black Vortex crossover working. And it seems unfortunate that the last few months of Bendis’s run have to get consumed with a dumb crossover. But in any case, this was pretty good, and the Jean Grey/Miles Morales moment was sweet.

X-Men #24

After a first issue that left me very cold, G Willow Wilson’s X-Men story finds its gear here, hitting a wonderful tone of being both weird and somewhat silly. It’s clearly a filler story running out the clock until Secret Wars, but at least it’s looking like fun filler, as opposed to mildly disastrous filler. The art is still crap though.

Darth Vader #1

A fun intro to what Gillen plans to do with this book, but a relatively insubstantial first issue. Gillen seems to mainly be playing Vader straight, although there’s a certain camp glory to a few of his quips, most obviously “I have only killed two.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.01: Winter is Coming

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State of Play
The choir goes off. There is a cold open running seven minutes set beyond the Wall. The first shot is three men of the Night’s Watch atop horses waiting for a gate to open.
The board is laid out thusly: 
Direwolves of Winterfell: Eddard Stark, Catelyn Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Robb Stark, Bran Stark
Stags of King’s Landing: Robert Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon
Lions of King’s Landing: Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Sandor Clegane, and Tyrion Lannister
Dragons of Pentos: Daenerys Targaryen, Viserys Targaryen
Fleurs-de-lis of Pentos: Jorah Mormont
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
The Wall is unmanned.
The episode is in seven parts. The first runs nine minutes and is set in Winterfell. Its transition is via image, opening with the sole survivor of the White Walker attack in the cold open being captured. It features the death of Will, the deserter from the Night’s Watch, who is beheaded by Lord Eddard Stark. 
The second runs two minutes and is set in Kings Landing. The transition is via hard cut from the Starks finding the direwolves and an establishing shot of King’s Landing as the funeral bells toll for John Arryn.
The third runs thirteen minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is via dialogue, with Jaime and Cersei talking about the death of John Arryn cutting to a raven flying towards Winterfell bearing the news. At the halfway mark, Tyrion is being introduced. 
The fourth runs six minutes and is set in Pentos. The transition via dialogue, with Robert saying that not all Targaryens are gone to Daenerys Targaryen looking out her window. 
The fifth runs ten minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is via theme, from Daenerys’s arranged marriage to Sansa’s.
The sixth runs even minutes and is set in Pentos. The transition is via dialogue, with Maester Luwin referring to Aerys Targaryen and a cut to an establishing shot of Daenerys’s wedding to Drogo.
The last runs three minutes and is set in Winterfell. The transition is via theme, from Daenerys’s rape by Drogo to Tyrion and the Hound talking about sex. The last shot is Bran falling from a window, shouting “Mornington Crescent.”
Analysis
It is a Great Game, in the Sherlockian tradition. A literary game of foreshadowing and prophecy. It is legendary in its baroqueness. The books are one of those legendarily delayed numbers, in the Valve Time tradition. The reason is straightforward: an author with an almost Tolkienesque graphomania whose obsessive level of detail has left him with too many plot threads to possibly resolve them. The television show does not foreground its obsessions quite as much, but they are there, in the form of a frighteningly detail-oriented production. It is thus a game of labyrinths, one to reward the obsessive. Victory is impossible, even, at this point, for George R.R. Martin. All the same, the objective is straightforward: you win by successfully describing the rules.
The first episode exemplifies this. It is an hourlong demonstration of what a game of Thrones can look like.
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A Mild Curiosity in a Junkyard (Silence in the Library/The Forest of the Dead)

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Credits
The end.
It’s June 7th, 2008. Rihanna is at number one with “Take a Bow,” having taken the slot the previous week. The Ting Tings, Coldplay, Usher, Madonna, and Justin Timberlake also chart. In news, Manchester United triumph in the first ever all-English European Cup final, defeating Chelsea on penalties. Construction begins in London on the Olympic Stadium, and Barack Obama finally puts the long fight for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to rest when he defeats Hillary Clinton to, by that point, absolutely nobody’s surprise. 
 
On television, meanwhile, the Doctor is in a library, shouting at shadows. Seething, he tells them to look him up. They do so, and begin to read.
 
 
Like anything, it emerged from a number of influences, and its history can in one sense be traced back indefinitely. It does not have a clear and definitive moment of creation – a pristine and bespoke origin story. It is, however, generally agreed to have a creator: Sydney Newman. Newman was a Canadian television producer who caught the eye of Associated British Corporation, a weekend ITV franchise in the North and Midlands of England. Moving there in 1958, he quickly made a reputation for himself, birthing the reasonably successful sci-fi anthology Out of this World, a fairly straightforward knockoff of the American Twilight Zone, and The Avengers, at first a fairly generic crime show, but eventually an international hit. At the beginning of 1963, he was poached by the BBC to become Head of Drama.
 
Shortly before Newman’s arrival, the BBC commissioned a study to see how science fiction might  could work on television. Mainstream critics like Kingsley Amis were drawing attention to the genre, the earliest days of the New Wave, spearheaded by writers like J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock, were playing out, and the BBC, committed to making various types of programming in the interest of the public, wanted to try it. The general conclusion was that sci-fi is a literary, adult genre that can’t really be done well for families because of the need for special effects. Time travel was suggested as a potentially strong subject for allowing a variety of low-cost dramas, and the report arrives six months before Newman. Three months after Newman started on the job, a Saturday evening timeslot between a sports program, Grandstand, and a pop music program, Juke Box Jury opened up. The slot called for an all-ages program, appealing to teenagers waiting for Juke Box Jury, adults holding over from Grandstand, and the existing children’s audience for that timeslot. Newman decided the sci-fi program would be perfect, and set to work designing it with C.E. Weber, a staff writer, and Donald Wilson, head of the Script department.
 
Curiously, the program’s development began with the sorts of characters who should be in it. The idea was a 30-something male protagonist and a younger female one, an older mentor figure, and an aesthetic that combined Victoriana with high-tech shininess.
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Saturday Waffling (February 6th, 2015)

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We’ve got a full week of content for the blog this week. Monday will be the last TARDIS Eruditorum. Tuesday will kick off A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones. Wednesday afternoon/evening will have comics reviews. Thursday will be Last War in Albion. And Friday is up in the air, but will be an audio post of some sort. Then on Saturday I’ll announce the schedule for the blog going forward.

The blog going forward is going to be funded by Patreon. Right now that’s at $279 per blog post. As long as it stays over $200, you can expect a blog post a week. If it gets to $400, that will increase to two, though I’ll still only charge people once a week. Just $1 a week lets you vote on the bonus posts.
I also have been posting regularly on Tumblr for a bit now, including lots of random short posts on topics of potential interest to readers. I have anonymous asks turned on there, so feel free to follow me and to pepper me with questions. 
But today, let’s just do a nice sort of… I think the kids call it an “AMA” in the comments here. Could take a bit for me to actually get to answering questions, as I’m kind of busy putting the finishing touches on Monday’s post, but I’ll tackle things when I can. So. Fire away.
To tackle the one I expect…
Logopolis is almost done – I’m going to do my last work on the manuscript on Tuesday, probably, then send it both to the copy-editor to triple check that all the “turn to page X” lines are correct and to James so he can finish off the cover art. Once it’s ready, I’ll get copies en route to everybody who bought them at the Kickstarter, order a batch to start sending copies to people who get signed copies, and then announce the book here for general order. It’ll be print only at first, though I don’t rule out an eventual ebook. I’ll start on the Volume 6 manuscript after that.
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