8 Little Known Facts About Well Known Science Fiction And Fantasy Authors

Post by **dng** » Tue Jan 03, 2023 5:55 pm

#1: Stephen King cannot spell the word “succinct”. Luckily he has an editor who can. (The editor was fired in 1989.)

#2: Though he never used it in any of his books, MR James’s favourite English word was “velveteen”, describing it in private as “sensuous, seductive.”

#3: Angela Carter modified her typewriter so that the i’s were dotted with lovehearts.

#4: Frank Herbert was addicted to mulberries to such an extent people often thought he was wearing lipstick.

#5: Vladimir Nabakov found England so bewildering he later described it as a “spacious and pretentious place with maudlin [figures] in various postures and states of enchantment amid a medley of pallid animals, dryads and trees.”

#6: HP Lovecraft was an absolute fool.

#7: Jules Verne was scared of brass bands (though he was quite fond of the sound of bells).

#8: Neil Gaiman once got lost in Soho. He was never seen again.

Post by **vom** » Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:00 pm

memorising each and every one of these in case there's a test

Post by **dng** » Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:23 pm

there's definitely going to be a test

Post by **blombluss** » Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:03 am

I wish I had an editor who could spell sucsint.

Good list, though!

Post by **endar** » Wed Jan 04, 2023 7:33 pm

I've been furiously trying to think of a way to cleverly add a terry wogan fact

Post by **dng** » Wed Jan 04, 2023 8:50 pm

#9: Terry Wogan did a poo

Post by **vom** » Wed Jan 04, 2023 9:26 pm

no he never

Post by **Pual** » Thu Jan 05, 2023 4:24 pm

Terald Wogan write books under the pseudonym JRR Tolkien

Post by **dng** » Mon Jan 09, 2023 6:52 pm

Sundays

Our weeks are pretty regimented. The same stuff on the same days, never any deviation from the plan. Monday to Friday it’s school in the day, homework at night. Saturdays we go to the library in the morning, play boardgames and cards in the afternoon while Dad cooks us fish and chips for dinner.

On Sundays they take us to the woods and leave us there. We can do anything. There’s no one to stop us. Out come the claws, the teeth. Our shrieks and howls scare the pigeons from the trees, scatter the rabbits through the brush. We go wild in there. We lose our minds.

Then back home for bath and bed.

Post by **blombluss** » Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:25 pm

The last Famous Five book Enid Blyton wrote was titled: Five Blow Up A Neptunian Moon

Post by **dng** » Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:30 pm

Excellent

Post by **blombluss** » Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:59 pm

The alien baddies in an Enid Blyton SF stroy would definitely be unshaven, have scars on their checks, and talk in a rough manner.

Post by **endar** » Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:37 pm

and be black

Post by **blombluss** » Tue Jan 10, 2023 8:51 pm

'swarthy'!

Post by **dng** » Mon Mar 06, 2023 8:36 pm

https://accumulationofthings.com/things ... simulator/

Post by **endar** » Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:12 pm

Thanks for this. I will print it out and use it

Post by **dng** » Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:27 pm

its served me well

Post by **blombluss** » Tue Mar 07, 2023 2:57 am

dng is a PUA?

Also: excellente!

Post by **dng** » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:01 pm

I'm not sure why I made this but I did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRfRPwvuXv4

(features an old toby vok song on the soundtrack which i hope as ever is okay)

Post by **dng** » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:05 pm

might actually work better if you sync it with this yakuza 0 music instead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYS4__SqTS4

like i just accidentally did

Post by **blombluss** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:04 am

dng wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:01 pm I'm not sure why I made this but I did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRfRPwvuXv4

(features an old toby vok song on the soundtrack which i hope as ever is okay)

Hurrah! Good stuff!

Post by **vom** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:54 am

excellent

also, as usual, I don't even recognise the Toby Vok song in question, haha

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:26 pm

it was from 2012 and called something or other that i can't remember now

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:35 pm

"intervals", apparently

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:35 pm

should have been called untervals

CandyDarling · Post by **CandyDarling** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:36 pm

dng wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:01 pm I'm not sure why I made this but I did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRfRPwvuXv4

This is excellent

Also where are the photos from? It feels like a museum exhibit called "How Britain Became Crabs", and it would have that famous quote somewhere from Percy Bysshe Shelley about a man telling you to despair about his works, which he thought would be around forever but are all destroyed

FAKE EDIT "Ozymandias" is what I'm thinking of. Anyway, that, nailed to a door

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:52 pm

they were taken in southend in 2015. i don't know why i suddenly remembered them yesterday (but i did, etc)

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 pm

The Safe

https://accumulationofthings.com/things ... /the-safe/

Post by **blombluss** » Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:52 pm

I bet it's not a safe - I bet it's an unsafe.

Post by **dng** » Sun Mar 19, 2023 3:20 pm

The Boat

https://accumulationofthings.com/things ... he-boat-2/

We took the boat out on the river.

It wasn't our boat. It wasn't even our river. We had no idea idea what we were doing. It was amazing we'd ever got it started, let alone kept it going.

"Imagine owning your own boat," I said, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

"Where would you even put it?" Sam said. "You know, when you'd got where you were going."

"Maybe they have boat parks," I suggested. "Pay and display multi-boaties."

"Maybe no one owns boats," Sam suggested. "Maybe they're all stolen!"

She spilled half a bottle of red wine down her life jacket and giggled. She didn't care. It was stolen too. The wine and the jacket and everything else. Especially the jaunty little captain’s hat.

"Maybe they aren't even boats!" I said deliriously. "Maybe they all just for show. 'Oooooh look, I've got a boat! Aren't I rich! Aren't I clever!'"

"Pretend boats," Sam said slowly, as if she was quoting something. "Are ships."

It didn't make any sense, but we laughed anyway. I spun the wheel or whatever it was called and made us drive around in circles, great arcs of spray splattering around us like rainbows. I fired a flare up into the sky. Part of me didn't really believe flares existed, but here we were. They were just like in a film, but without the whooshing sound, and not as bright, because it was the middle of the day. No one fires flares off in the day in films. What’d be the point?

"We should steal a plane tomorrow," Sam suggested, as she vomited into a bright yellow rubber boot that happened, purely by luck, to be between her feet. "Or a tank!"

But by then we were lost, a long way out to sea, sinking, unable to swim. No one ever saw us again. No one ever even knew it was us who stole the boat.

Post by **blombluss** » Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:51 am

Enjoyed reading that! Nice one, Davusk!

Post by **dng** » Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:21 pm

cat, fox, others, us

https://accumulationofthings.com/things ... others-us/

Post by **blombluss** » Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:48 pm

*thumbs up* Hurray!

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:53 pm

A Tale Of King Arthur's Court

https://accumulationofthings.com/things ... urs-court/

The King called for a feast, for it was Christmas, and so every single bird and every single beast of the country was caught and killed and brought to the kitchens of Camelot to be roasted in the marrow of its own bones. Every fruit from every tree and every root from every bush that wasn’t deadly poisonous in its own right was brewed up and fermented and distilled until it was as intoxicating as a single glance from Queen Guinevere herself. And twelve days of merriment was enjoyed by all who had earned their place around the table.

At the end of the feast, and the beginning of the new year, the Knights set forth for distant lands in search of supplies for next year’s gathering. By Merlin’s estimates there were ten feasts until they brought about the end of the world and the death of all things. Lancelot claimed he could get that down to eight if he tried, and everyone laughed and clapped him on the back, as he drank one last pitcher of sweetly rotting mead before climbing up onto his horse and setting out into the mist of the early morn.

Post by **endar** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:34 pm

ecxzellent

Post by **blombluss** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:58 pm

Agree
d.

Also - Lancelot is a great man!

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:17 pm

hoorat thank you

Post by **dng** » Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:27 pm

The New Sound

A few years after the catastrophe, they reinvented sound for the silence, so if you were rich enough you could hear again. It worked by some sort of pressure manipulation within the walls of your skull, and although I’m sure they could have come up with some elegant design for the devices the demand was so high they didn’t really bother. Subsequently it looked like you were wearing suction cups on your ears, the sort of toilet plungers they have in old cartoons that I have no idea whether really existed or not.

If I’d been in charge, I’d have made them look like seashells, iridescent surfaces flickering through visual equivalents to the simulated audio pulsations being forced through the wearer’s skull. But anything can look cool when it signifies wealth and privilege, I suppose, and everyone wanted a pair. They were this year’s hottest fad, even more popular than those hairy sweets everyone seems to like.

For Christmas I bought our kids an hour at one of the sound booths, each of them taking turns while the others stroked their desserts and stared in awe and wonder at the expressions on their siblings’ faces as the pressure undulations stimulated sections of their brain dormant since birth.

Our hour was up before I got a chance to use them. On the way home, through eyes stinging with barely suppressed tears, I tapped out “What was it like?” They replied with several thumbs up, two love hearts, and fifty seven consecutive Ed Sheeran emojis.

Now the tears flowed. They would not stop.

Post by **blombluss** » Sat Apr 01, 2023 1:01 am

Good stuff, Davusk!

Post by **dng** » Tue Dec 26, 2023 3:23 pm

A List Of 21 Possible Apocalypses For 2024

1. Drought
2. Famine
3. Disease
4. War
5. Radiation
6. Irradiation
7. Irrationality/psychosis
8. End of oil
9. End of electricity
10. Reality collapse
11. Clocks no longer tell the correct time
12. Hot
13. Cold
14. Wet
15. Mould
16. Usurped by cats
17. Enslaved by cats
18. Abandoned by cats
19. Ignored by cats
20. Enslaved/usurped by aliens
21. Ignored by aliens (and cats)

Post by **blombluss** » Thu Dec 28, 2023 2:13 pm

Don't let me down '10', I'm relying on you!

Post by **dng** » Mon Apr 01, 2024 7:24 pm

a short story

https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-nature-of-101510507

(that's actually a rewritten old short story i never finished)

Post by **blombluss** » Tue Apr 02, 2024 12:57 am

Top stuff, Davuss! And thought provoking too! *double thumbs up*