word mining central
Bird and Moon is one of those comics that shows up in my twitter feed, but that I haven’t had a chance to check out.
It is excellent. Scientifically factual, and at the same time funny. Well-drawn and clear. Precise. And much easier to carry around in book form than to find in my twitter feed.
Day 239:
Unlike the horror land squid that whip the snot out of me with poison tentacles and rocks and who, oh did I mention, pass through walls, the water squid out in the bay/ocean/lagoon/whatever to my north never seem to get aggressive.
Well, not in the “kill you” way, anyway.
They are big fans of HI WHAT ARE YOU DOING CAN I BE IN YOUR FACE? Which I am not as fond of. Especially when there’s six or eight of them at once.
I had initially assumed that the squid were native to this rock the same way I believe the zombies and skeletons might be… but now I’m starting to think maybe the squid were put here by whoever terraformed the place, because they’re too docile and too “please stab me and cook me and eat me” to be of the same kingdom and order as the horse-sized spiders.
I haven’t hunted any yet, though I did break a shovel on one earlier because it got in my way. Broke the shovel, not the squid. They’re tough ones.
It’s obvious from the tiny details in Sean Grigsby’s book Smoke Eaters that he is a professional firefighter (a fact that his bio confirm) and he puts that knowledge to good use in this fast-paced romp through a future US where dragons have emerged from the earth and destroyed all but a few city-states.
It’s a breath of fresh air to see firefighters fighting dragons instead of knights (with both laser swords and lances, no less!). And it’s also a breath of fresh air to have a protagonist old enough to be my father leading the pack.
If you liked Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz, the pacing of the writing and the stubbornness of the protagonist will feel familiar… but not a big surprise since they’re both published by Angry Robot.
All in all a romp of a read.
Day 238:
Long day. Tired. No interesting monster attacks. No interesting clay. Squids in my way all the time.
Going to eat some mushroom stew and go to bed.
Day 237:
I think I mentioned before that I was finding some nice deposits of clay occasionally, especially near the water. It’s great for making dishes, fires well, doesn’t seem to have a lot of air in it… so I’m mostly making bricks out of it.
I haven’t decided why yet.
But I am considering setting down some roads between the various places I’ve opened up.
It would get me fired. We’re not supposed to leave any trace of our existence on the rocks we mine.
I’m not sure I care. Dragging tree logs and things like that from place to place in the mud is definitely not fun, and I’ve already altered the environment enough that I can probably be spotted from space just by the heat signatures of my furnaces, especially when I have all eight fired up to melt sand, like I do now.
So maybe roads. Because a brick house seems too fairy tale and a brick road might somehow lead me out of this place.