Me neither.

Romana is *great*. Equal parts out-of-her-depth junior adventurer, overeducated supergenius and total fey weirdo.

Adric isn't human. It doesn't seem to come up a lot.

You're allowed to play games.

I assumed you were going off-planet.

Whereas the Rockbiter's "These look like big strong hands..." hits HARD.

Likewise. But no, it's "Here's Atreyu, here's his horse, here's the Swamp of Sadness, oh no!"

I'm glad of these cultural through-lines, between Stu-then and Stu-now. I'm glad that the old stories are still being told, that were once the new stories.

Was surprised to (re?)discover the short story 400 Boys, which was one of the short films in the most recent series of Love, Death and Robots.

That's a long latency, but it fits with LDR's sci-fi nostalgia and its cyberpunk threads.

The antho is the good shit, all blood and sweat and vomit and chrome.

Reading it takes me back to dusty secondhand bookshops, with paperback anthologies and glossy sweaty sci-fi mags.

The golden age of sci-fi is fifteen, and all that.

I am a bit disheartened to realise that Artax's death isn't actually set up very well. A horse we've just met gets sad and dies. Upsetting, but hardly good storytelling.

I mean. Root vegetables were instrumental in electronic music as well.

Hence: Yam-aha.

Yeah, look, he does sound pretty hopeless. And the system sucks.

The question was "do I feel sympathy?" and I do. I'm not going to say anyone else should, but I do.

I wouldn't want to be him, anyway.