Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 6h

Ah, sorry. PKD. My brain turns off at 10 PM. Philip K. Dick. Specifically, a scene from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

2

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 6h

From the surviving goons' point of view, they were quietly being criminal when someone shot the guards, tossed two poison grenades into the warehouse, shot the place up, and then left.

Those two grenades did 40 HP to "every enemy present on the scene". Does being in the warehouse count as present?

4

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 6h

Well, that was odd. Handed my PCs a PDK session--who's deluded, them or the other people who claim to work for the same Institute?--and what they did was shoot up a mob warehouse. Which, admittedly, the PCs know is connected to the guy who loves using imposters.

2 8

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 12h

"Skull morphology diverges between urban and rural populations of red foxes mirroring patterns of domestication and macroevolution"

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Skull morphology diverges between urban and rural populations of red foxes mirroring patterns of domestication and macroevolution | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Human activity is drastically altering the habitat use of natural populations. This has been documented as a driver of phenotypic divergence in a number of wild animal populations. Here, we show that ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

2 5

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 12h

Aw, people said don't adopt a bear and my friend did that without any problems right before they stopped answering their phone or their email and stopped showing up at work.

I have to say their Halloween diorama--bones on the front lawn--is on point.

1 4 28

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 14h

Ever know ahead of time you were going to regret a post? This is one of those.

My skull is hard to x-ray. Impervious. One might say thick.

2 2

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 14h

One of my head injuries involved me breaking someone's gun with my head. I expected it to hurt like heck it but it didn't. I couldn't do math in my head for about a week but otherwise OK.

Got a pre-MRI x-ray to look for metal, JIC. No metal but they had to do the x-ray a few times because (cont')

1

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 17h

He's been doing this about twice a century for one hundred and eighty thousand years.

4

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 17h

"I always marry, when I do marry, a girl as much younger than myself as possible, so the disparity will not become too great. Say I am thirty; I marry a girl of sixteen. Then when it is time that I must leave her, she is forty-six and I am still thirty."
(con't)

1 5

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 17h

If you're lucky, the guy is only 50. As recounted by the hundreds of millennia old, unaging protagonist of Letter To A Phoenix:

(con't)

1 4

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 17h

Hmmm.

Library entry for the ebook edition of Sangu Mandanna's A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping: wait time of at least six months.

1 3

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 19h

It was working 30 minutes ago. I think the issue is at the far end.

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 19h

James Arthur Hetley (August 15, 1947 - October 8, 2025)

Speculative fiction author dies in bike crash.

www.mainecremationcare.com/obituaries/j...

Application Error

www.mainecremationcare.com

2 3

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 19h

Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance, volume 1) by Madeleine E. Robins

Fallen Woman turned private investigator Sarah Tolerance is hired to recover a fan. Carnage ensues.

jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/other...

Other Side of Life

2003’s Point of Honour is the first volume in Madeleine E. Robins’ Sarah Tolerance alternate history regency mystery series. Regency England offers disgraced women like Sarah Tolerance a number of ca...

jamesdavisnicoll.com

1 5

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

Technically, I was just within the fireball, not its cause.

1 2

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

Or perhaps not.

Back cover blurb of St. Clair's Sign of the Labrys.

WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!

ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!

Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this. SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to the ageless, immemorial rites...

FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!!

3 3 39

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

Old time SF might still have the edge over 2020s where blurbs are concerned. I'll take HE KNEW THE MARTIAN LOVE SECRET over LORD OF THE FLIES MEETS ANNE OF GREEN GABLES IN THIS FRIENDS TO ENEMIES FOUND FAMILY ACCIDENTAL WISH ROMANTASY.

4 30 150

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, I've not read that.

1

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

I would actually go to a movie theatre to watch a Muppet Gray Lensman.

3

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

A modern Gray Lensman movie should ditch the Eddore vs Arisia plot to focus on Haynes and Lacy's romantic schemes.

2 6

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

“You aren’t asking if everything stayed on the beam.” This from Lacy.
“No need — I had a spy-ray on the whole performance.”

2 2

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

“Here’s to love!” Haynes gave the toast.
“Ain’t it grand!” Surgeon-Marshal Lacy responded.
“Down the hatch!” they chanted in unison, and action followed word.

(con't: it gets better)

1 2

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

There are slash fiction writers who aren't as invested in their preferred relationship as those two old coots.

To quote:

1 6

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

The part about Gray Lensman that astonished me when I reread it a decade ago was the subplot about two elderly senior officers being obsessed with the Kinnison-MacDougall romance to the point of egregiously abusing their authority to ensure the romance was successful.

2 4

James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, axe to the chest is distracting but seven at best. Stabbed with molten glass was my 11.

(I was the only person in 1st aid who'd been stabbed with molten glass. I question my classmates' life choices)

4