Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Watson.  (Including the versions who appear in TV shows.)  And all those companions that the Doctor picked up over the years.  And the function they played.  Or functions.

Namely, giving us a route in.  And a comparison.  And someone to sympathesize with -- they often are much nicer people than the genius is.  Which means they also give the main character a reason to do things, by providing moral pressure.
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Back from Boskone and ready to babble,starting with the first panel.

Which panel did indeed stick to overwhelmingly to SF, despite a mention of Terry Pratchett.
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A topic near and dear to my heart, since the novel I think is ready to go out doesn't have a title I'm really happy with.

It needs to be striking.  It needs to be evocative.  It needs to fit on a book cover, for novels, which is why you have a lot more leeway on the short stories for length on short stories.  Subtitles can be nice for clarification, especially if the name is more evocations.  Then, there's a certain tendency of self-publishing amateurs to go for subtitles, and often extended ones, so there's a certain danger of not appearing professional.  They also may make the reader not pick it up, because of wanting a self-contained work -- or waiting for the rest to be released.
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Does hard SF have to have cardboard characters?

Partly, of course, this is a definitional problem.

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Discussion of the changes in the genres.

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Some books got mentioned.  China Mieville came up quite a bit.  Also mentioned House of Leaves, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

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