what Dave thinks about movies, books and everything
{4.5/5} “Felicitas turned to her friend. Adriana stared straight ahead. Felicitas felt sorry for Adriana because she knew Adriana hadn’t changed, didn’t look at things the way she now did. And it was the same all over the yard. Some now had the spark of life. Others, like Adriana, were still dead, their eyes leaden. […]
{4/5} “I know I promised I wouldn’t waste my intellect on kryptonite robots and elaborate super-death traps… But three months ago, I looked in the mirror at those nasty little spiderwebs of lines around my eyes, and I realized something… I’m getting older and… and he isn’t… So, if I want to die happy, it’s […]
{3.5/5} “You can’t find out everything from books, you know.” Brendan lives in a monastery where his uncle Cellach is the abbot. Uncle Cellach is focussed on building a wall around the monastery, to keep the Vikings out. The other monks, as well as Brendan, are more interested in illuminating manuscripts. When Aidan arrives with the […]
{3.5/5} “But research is an art, not a science, because anyone who knows what they’re doing can find the crumbs, the wheres, whats, and whos. The art is in the whys: the ability to read between the crumbs, not to mix metaphors. For every event, there is a cause and effect. For every crime, a […]
{4.5/5} “Do we have time to get to a motel or do we need to do it right here?” In a world where everyone tells the truth, Mark writes screenplays — of course, they’re all based on history. Unfortunately he was stuck with the 1300s and no one wants to see a movie about the […]
{4/5} “The closer you look the less you see.” A magician, an escape artist, a mentalist, and a pickpocket from across the country are all invited to New York at a certain date and time — they all show up. It turns out that some of them already know each other. A year later the […]
{4.5/5} “He tried to shunt aside his own fear so that he could see Jerrison’s face contort, see him recoil from some invisible blow or explosion, see him, the president of the United States, be the first person holding that office in decades to walk in a soldier’s shoes, share a soldier’s burden, and feel […]
Ted Chiang is one of my favourite short story writers. He’s not very prolific (a story every year or two) but his collection Stories of Your Life and Others is amazing and so are the stories he’s written since then. He’s got a new story available on the Subterranean Press web site, and it’s brilliant: […]
{5/5} “Detection is not just a skill, Watson, it’s a point of view. You need to train yourself to be alert to the bizarre, the unusual, that which has no place in any given picture.” Sherlock Holmes is just out of rehab and his father has hired him a sobriety partner, Joan Watson, who used […]
{4.5/5} “A truly great structure — one that is meant to stand the tests of time — never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature. He must be captivated by the light.” Kate is a doctor, and has just moved […]