The next Bookmadness book will also be featured in Militant Agnostic. That’s because tomorrow, I begin a look at A.C. Grayling’s The Good Book: A Secular Bible.
Grayling his taken it upon himself to write a new version of the Bible, which, while hardly free of moralising, at least cuts down on the scientific inaacuracies. As an agnostic, this endeavour fascinates me as a thought experiment, which is why I want to analyse it in this way. (I’ve dipped into it a little already, and I can tell you right now that I won’t be spending much time talking about the prose style. Suffice to say, it seems that two of the aspects of the Bible that Grayling wanted to replicate were tedium and didacticism.)
We’re going to be here a while folks – this is a huge book, and I want to give it the attention it deserves. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
Folks, it’s approaching 2 in the morning as I write this, and the extra special post I was hoping to have ready for you tomorrow is still several hours away from complete. And fool that I am, I haven’t yet written the other two posts for today either.
So I’m going to bed now, because my head hurts from the tiredness, but I promise you, I will be doing the posts I promised for this Sunday. Just a little late, is all. And I’ll try to be more careful that this doesn’t happen again in future.
Because there’s going to be more posts like the one I’ve been working on for about 12 hours now in the future, but I’m going to learn from this and pace myself better working on them. And I can promise you right now, if you’re a fan of my Marvel Universe Timeline – and let’s face it, who isn’t? – you’re going to love this post (and the others of its ilk that follow it). And if you’re not a fan of the timelines, well, you’re going to have a better idea of what I do with my time.
Peace out.
You see, it was all very well and good for me to try (and often fail) to write five blog posts a day, but starting next week, I will be working full time again. Which means there’s no way I can manage to keep that level of productivity up.
So, starting today, I’ll be doing three new posts each day (although today, that doesn’t include this post). Several of what are currently Weekly Features are going to be moving to become Irregular Features instead – which means they’ll pop up more occasionally than they currently do. The full details are here. In particular, the new fictions are going to become a lot less frequentm at least for a while.
I will be trying to keep up with stuff, but clearly, it’s not always going to be easy. All I can do is crave your indulgence.
Seriously, I’m asking.
I do the features on this blog because I enjoy doing them, but I’ll admit that doing five new posts’ worth of content each day is occasionally a bit of a grind to me. I’m not always in the mood for a particular post of the day it’s due (or in some cases, I haven’t found something that fits – the Afterlives and the Pharmacopeaia in particular run into this problem with distressing regularity).
So I ask you: what would you like to see? Is there a feature you’d like to see more often, or conversely, one you’d like to see less often?
Is there something entirely new you’d like me to add to the site – I already have a few of these in the pipeline, but I’m always open to new awesome ideas.
Or are you happy with the way things are going here, and you’d simply prefer to see a little more stability here?
Whatever your wishes, my wish is that you make them known. Please? 
…and unfortunately, there may not be anything tomorrow, either. My father’s in hospital, with something serious enough that, well, it comes before anything else. I’ll get back to you when I can, people.
I’m sorry to report that after less than two weeks, my bold plans for keeping this site well fed with new content have fallen down a bit. There’s still some stuff lined up for the next few days, but at this point, I’m not expecting to resume full service until Tuesday. My fault for not making sure I was further ahead when I had the chance to, but I’ll work harder to make sure that doesn’t happen again in the future.
In the meantime, hope you’re all having a lovely weekend.
Well, that was unexpected.
You see, a little over two months ago, I started experiencing difficulties with my hosting. The centre did not hold, things fell apart, and well, you know the rest.
It’s taken a long time (and a migration of the entire site to a new host) to get them sorted out, but finally, here we all are. The site has a new look, new navigation (which I hope you all find reasonably intuitive) and, since I have not been idle even if the site has, some new features.
In particular, there will now be four posts each day (not counting Station Keeping posts like this one): a feature post, a random content post, a rock and roll history of the world entry and, on most days, an original fiction post.
There’s also several new features, but I’ll leave those to make themselves apparent to you as we go along.
So in short, welcome to the latest and greatest era of The Centre Cannot Hold, and thanks for coming back.
— Loki
I turn 42 today, and I’ve decided to give myself the present of not trying to devise more Random Content today. See you all tomorrow.
“The future, always so clear to me,
had become like a highway at night.
We were in uncharted territory now,
making up history as we went along.”
Sarah Connor
To say I have a lot of plans is like saying that it gets dark at night. To extend that metaphor a little further: I’d like to talk about a few particular nights, and the quality and texture of the darkness in them.
The Brunswick Street Irregulars
I just found the absolutely perfect cover artist for it, which fills me with the urge to write lots and lots of it. So there’s going to be quite a bit more of that in the future. I’m getting to near the end of the first act – maybe another half dozen posts or so, I think – and things are about to get less pleasant for everyone.
Mugwump Jism
There’s going to be a new review column here, in which I look at the weird and wonderful. Things that tickle me – or unsettle me – by reflecting a particular mindset. Some of them will be old, old things, but some of them will also be new things. I’ll try to mix it up a little, but it will depend. To begin with, at least, it’s likely to be an irregular feature, but that might change.
Webcomics
I’ve started scripting one webcomic – and I have an artist who wants to draw it, too – and I have another two I’d like to get going pretty soon, too. I’m not sure where I’ll be hosting them, but if it’s not here, you can bet that I’ll be telling you about them right here and posting the links.
Timelines
Work is continuing on the main Marvel Timeline, but it’s slow going. Also, given DC’s soon to be implemented reboot, there’s going to need to be some changes there. I’m thinking that I may do a new timeline for the post-Flashpoint universe, but we’ll see how that pans out. Also, now that the WildStorm universe is basically finished as a separate entity, I plan to do a timeline for that at some point too.
Other Stuff
I’m getting a little more serious about my writing, and I haven’t decided whether to keep this website the way it is and add a bit more personal stuff to it, or to launch another page elsewhere to do that with. I’m quite torn about what would be best…
Further developments as they come to hand, folks.
The first section of the new and revised Trade Paperback Timelines listings.
If you remember my announcement from just under a month ago, I promised a raft of new features for the timelines.
This is the first installment of those. There’s now a Frequently Asked Questions section, and a new Non-Comic Timeline covering the life of Elric of Melniboné, but those are lesser things.
The real changes are taking place in the Marvel Timelines section, especially the Earth-616 timeline (i.e. the main Marvel Universe). What used to be page 1 of that timeline has now been split up into 6 separate sections to make it easier to zero in on the bit you’re actually interested in – and every last page of the six has new books added to it. There’s about three times as many books listed in these six pages as there was in the one older page, with a few surprises (I hope) thrown in too. (They also, not coincidentally, leave plenty of room for expansion as new releases take place.)
The six new pages are, in chronological order:
I hope you’ll enjoy them – it’s been a labour of love putting this together, and there’s so much more yet to come. Although I think I’ve earned a little break before I five into the next secton.
I’m very gratified by the popularity of this feature – it’s far and away the most popular thing on this whole site – and I’m always trying to come up with ways to improve it. In fact, for the last little while, I’ve been working on a massive revision and expansion of it. The new version of the timeline will have the following features:
- More detail in each entry – information about what issues are reprinted in it for every volume, and more details if they’re warranted.
- More and smaller pages, for quicker load times.
- Titles explaining what period the page covers, rather than just the numerical titles.
- A few more subsidiary timelines spinning out of the main Marvel timeline.
- More subheadings on pages to make it easier to locate major events.
- A more detailed listing of what’s on each page, again in order to make it easier to locate major events.
- A Frequently Asked Questions section to cover some of the more general information about my assumptions and rules of thumb for the Timelines that doesn’t belong on those pages themselves.
- …and more besides.
So I hope you’ll bear with me, ‘cos it will take a little while longer yet, before I have everything sorted out to my satisfaction, but I promise, it will be worth it when I’m done.
I’m working from start to finish on the timeline, so you’ll probably still see the occasional addition to the later pages in the chronology for a little while, but as I complete each page, I’ll be adding updates only to the newer pages until I’m ready to bring in all the revised versions at once.
I checked my schedule for the week, and that’s what I’ve got marked down for here. Fictions, new to you, Wednesdays and Fridays. Unfortunately, there’s a problem.
Continue reading There’s supposed to be fiction here
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