[Coco] testing

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

----- "Willard Goosey" <goosey at virgo.sdc.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 05:56:00AM +0000, wdg3rd at comcast.net wrote:
> > 
> > I again recommend that anybody sentient read the graphic novel
> > "Roswell, Texas" (which features Texas Air Militia pilot Eugene
> > Roddenberry and an incident in the far west Texas town of Roswell
> on
> > July 4, 1947).  <http://www.bigheadpress.com/roswell>.  The story
> is
> 
> Wow!  That's a good one!  I just read the first 300 pages in one
> sitting.  Very cool.

Bunch of other good stuff there, and a fair amount now is available in dead-tree form.  For cost reasons, the print version "Roswell, Texas" is all monochrome inside, which is a bummer (Jen Zach did some mighty fine work).

Another spectacular item is "Odysseus the Rebel".  Odysseus is presented as a serious atheist.  Not that he doesn't believe in the gods, he doesn't have to believe because he's met too many of them in person.  He's just against the concept (as I am).

The in-progress "Phoebus Krumm" is good, but it really helps to have read the predecessors, _Henry Martyn_, _Bretta Martyn_ and _The Wardove_ first.  There's been a lot of background fill-in in the on-line strip to help folks catch up.

Unlike all of the other strips on the site, "Escape from Terra" is not a single novel.  It's an arc-based continuing story (like Babylon 5 but with no scheduled finish point).  It's bloody good.  El Neil isn't one of the writers, but Sandy and Scott are intimately familiar with his work, and there is definite influence.

Oh, and for folks who can still handle text without pictures, there's a tab at the top of Neil's blog on the site that gives you his entire novel _Ceres_, a sequel to his Prometheus Award winner _Pallas_.

L. Neil Smith is my favorite living writer.  Admittedly, he's also a personal friend.  He and his beautiful wife and daughter have eaten my chili.  I heartily recommend all of his fiction, as well as his essays.  Of course, it helps when reading his work to not be a complete statist, because everything he writes is from a libertarian/anarchist individual rights perspective, which I happen to share from before I ever read a word he's written.
-- 
Ward Griffiths        wdg3rd at comcast.net

<home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd>