Linkfest 2022-02-04: The Stainless Steel Rat
Stuff Ian Likes: The Stainless Steel Rat
I rather enjoyed Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat, but as Ian notes, the various books in the series vary widely in quality. Ian’s post is well worth reading, as he is able to look at the entire series as a whole, and compare and contrast it to other works.
My own tastes have sharpened a lot in the last decade, I should give the Stainless Steel Rat another go this year, and see what I think now.
The Atlantic: Is California on the Verge of a Second Gold Rush?
It will never not be funny to me that what kind of minerals you can get out of the ground is a constantly moving target as technology improves and markets change, and this is always a surprise.
How Brad Pitt's green housing dream for Hurricane Katrina survivors turned into a nightmare
Designing weather appropriate houses is hard.
Why Fighter Pilots Work Intensely For Eight Hours Just To Fly For 30 Minutes
There are fair and unfair reasons that it is called the “Chair Force”.
With Both Hands: His Share of Glory: the collected short fiction of C. M. Kornbluth
Overall, the Futurians did bad things to storytelling, but Kornbluth individually was a pretty good story teller.
The Long View: In the Wake of the Plague
Norman Cantor's thoroughly unreliable account of the effect of the Black Death on European history
There is some reason to think people lived in the Americas before the ancestors of the current Native Americans arrived. Greg Cochran looks at what might have made that sequence of events happen.
Of Pirates, Pigs, and Pagan Astronauts: Poul Anderson's Fantasy
I’ve loved what I’ve read of Anderson so far, this makes me want to read even more.
I’ve talked about McNamara’s folly, but this looks at the flaws in reasoning that accompanied that sorry history. https://mcnamarafallacy.com/
Via John D Cook
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