This book itself was written in two days and it shows. Fortunately for Steve Windsor, the author, it is also a damn useful book, concise and mostly to the point. Full disclosure: I've decided to study writing and hopefully write a novel. This is the first book I have read about the subject.

Meant as a reference, Nine Day Novel: Writing Fiction: How to Use Story Structure and Write Your Fiction Novel Faster is going for covering structure and speed, identifying a commonly used template for fiction and applying it for creating the structure of the book. Windsor then prepares the future author for a nine day schedule in which to write a 100000 word novel - which is at the lower end spectrum of what is considered one, but still technically a novel - even indicating ways to gain the time without making huge changes to your way of life. You know, stuff like not watching TV series (damn you, Steve!!).

He names the template 4PSS (four part story structure) which looks kind of like this:

1. SETUP
   • Opening scenes
     
   • Killer Hook Event
     
   • Establish setting, scene (location), stakes of hero
     
   • Foreshadow coming events
     
   • Set up the inciting incident
     
   • First plot point - inciting incident
2. REACTION – retreat, regroup, run
   • Reaction to first plot point
     
   • First pinch point - allude to evil force – Physical middle of Part 2
     
   • Reaction to pinch point
     
   • Lead up to midpoint
     
   • Midpoint of the story
     
   • Revelation - figure out what you are up against – Physical middle of your Novel
3. PROACTION - Doomed attempt to take action
   • Reaction to midpoint
     
   • Second pinch point - allude to evil force again
     
   • Reaction to second pinch point
     
   • Pre second plot point lull - give the reader a tidbit of info – take a breath
     
   • Lead up to second plot point
     
   • Second plot point - the world changes again
     
   • Start the Ticking Clock
4. RESOLUTION
   • Hero accepts reality of the situation
     
   • Climax battle scene
     
   • Final Resolution
     
   • New equilibrium/cliffhanger if writing a series

Actually, it looks exactly like this. I've downloaded it from his web site. He even goes the extra mile to create a story with us and point out famous books that used this structure.

Bottom line: as a reference, it is a great little thing. It is actually part of a Nine Day Novel series that covers outlining, writing, self editing, self publishing, etc. It's too bad he plugs the Scrivener book writing software tool, which only seems to work on Mac. I've tried installing the Windows version and it is a crappy Java bull that never went past the start of the installer. That may indicate that the book is slightly dated, but it's not, it has been published in January 2015, at least on Amazon.

The first thing to notice about Robin Hobb's writing is that it's good. Characters are well written and well embedded in the scenes, scenes are well described, albeit sometimes too well, the world is well defined and the story feels both original and familiar, so it wasn't difficult to enjoy reading the three books in the Farseer series. Sure, there were issues with the story that I felt frustrated about, and I am afraid to say that it comes from the female perspective of the writer, more than not, but overall it was really difficult to put down once I started reading it.

The main character of the story is the bastard of a royal prince, next in line to the throne, that is being brought by the maternal father to the prince's doorstep. It's yours, you take care of him, that sort of thing. The poor mother had nothing to say in the matter, although why that stayed like this for the rest of the story is unclear. Immediately the existence of this child leads to major changes: his father doesn't come to see it or recognizes him in any way, but abdicates from his royal position and retires to the country, where he is subsequently murdered. The child is raised by the prince's most loyal man, a stableman that is tasked to the boy's care by the prince himself before his death. The old king takes a fancy to the boy and keeps him at the castle if he agrees to become a King's loyal man and become the apprentice of the royal assassin. Several other things happen that see him trained in fine writing, royal intrigue, sword fighting and so on.

Another important aspect of the story is the magic. The Farseer royal line, meaning the king and his sons, are strong in the Skill, something that gives them mostly power over other people or the ability to see or communicate at great distance. There is another type of magic that comes from the mountain folk called the Wit, which is the ability to communicate and even bond to animals. The latter is seen as disgusting and sometimes criminal and many a person was put on trial and killed for having a talent in this type of magic. Guess what? The bastard has both talents.

So it starts like the normal fantasy young adult plot, where the main character is a hapless child that discovers he has superpowers, but Hobb makes this as an unpleasant experience as possible for him: lost friends, jealous uncles that see him as next in line for the throne if ever recognized by royalty, a tragic attraction for a childhood friend, the moral dilemmas associated with being an assassin, deceit, torture, and so on. I will not spoil the book for you, so I will stop here.

The thing that annoyed me the most about the book was the inconsistency in some matters. One moment he is a berserker brawler attacking with a big ax and killing dozens, the next he is traveling everywhere carrying swords or staffs and having fear of two or three people. At one moment he is a trained assassin, the next he can't figure out how to kill people. At one time he blows a powder in someone's face and they immediately die, the next he doesn't know how to kill people that he routinely gets close to, one moment the love of his life is the most important thing, the next he ignores her for a few months while he does stuff for the king. Also, he is loyal to a fault, while everybody else, including his wife and his so called teachers, treat him as a child and keep essential information and training from him. This gets worse and worse as you get closer to the end of the story. The first book was wonderful, the second gets more inconsistent and the decisions of the characters are really weird and the third is filled with WTF moments. The most annoying thing of all is the ending, which features some spectacular sacrifices that are completely invalidated a few pages later on.

Bottom line: the kid is much more effective, smart and logical when he is a child. As he goes through puberty he gets worse and worse until his only skill seems to be listening to what others say and obeying for no good reason. If you don't like the books too much, be happy that the story ends satisfactorily with the three books, if you do like the writing and the world Hobb describes, there are many other books set in the Elderlings world, including a sequel trilogy to the Farseer one called Fitz and the Fool.

The Cycle of Arawn is a three book story arch written by Edward W. Robertson. I have no memory on where I got the idea of reading this series, but now, after researching a bit, I realize is one of those self published books that caught on sooner or later. Robertson is a 30 something guy who wrote a surprising number of books besides Arawn, but he is still young and that may explain the quality of the writing. I mean, he has a blog on Blogspot, for crying out loud! Who does that? (clarification: at the time I had this blog on Blogspot)

The story is about this young orphan who lives his life by the day, stealing, mugging, surviving. One day, though, he sees a wondrous thing: a man resurrecting a dog from death. He then decides, just like that, to find out what that is about and so he learns about the nether, the opposite of ether, which is the normal stuff of wizardry. The writing is not bad, but not good either. The characters are very thinly fleshed out and they change their behaviour as dictated by the plot, rather than be their own people. One thing that immediately jarred me is that the language of the writing is quite modern, while it presents a medieval magical world. The disconnect grows when all the people in the land, including men, women, different nations, different species, seem to have the same sense of humour. But what really annoyed me about The Cycle of Arawn is the inconsistency of the characters and even the story. In a three book series about nether users, ether is merely mentioned in a few places, although it was supposed to be most of the magic used in the land, for example.

Let's start and stop with the main character: Dante. He starts off as a poor street thug, but he can read, learn new languages, go to places to get books and find references on how to translate an ancient tome, all while being chased around by the owners of the book. He is 16 at the time. I would find that difficult to believe even if he were a modern 16 year old, but one living on the streets in medieval times? All the learning that is done after this point, though, is completely different: pompous old people give him hints and let him work it out in the most convoluted unprofessional educational system that ever existed. At every point, when people with vast difference in hierarchical position interact, they joke and make fun of each other like drinking buddies. This ignoring of the way structured societies work makes Dante become the leader of the nethermancer city, the first human member of a clan of non-human tribe, the starter of a war, the ender of the war, the ender of another war, all by the time he reaches 26 and while going around the world doing dangerous stuff. Which is all nice and neat, but completely absurd. At the end, it seems like the reading of the book that started it all wasn't even necessary or even the best way to learn to become a wizard. One begs the question, what exactly did the order of the nethermancers with the magic before encountering an uneducated kid from another country?

One might think that, being a young adult thing, this book has a lot of action, adventure, romance. It is not true. Dante is essentially a geek, a book buff that got superpowers. The most interesting portions of the cycle is when he reads something new or finds new ways of using the magic. He doesn't have any romantic relationship of note from start to finish and the only girl he kind of likes becomes the girlfriend of another and then he accidentally kills her and then he just moves on. The action sequences are poor, uncoordinated, uninspiring and worst of all: not using things the character has learned how to do in previous sections of the story. One thing that permeates the cycle: nobody gives a damn about anything, really. They proclaim some things, then they just brush them away like nothing happened and move on to make the plot work.

Bottom line: it was a classical "boy find special powers" kind of myth, but went all over the place. It was easy to read, even if some descriptions of non essential stuff took pages! (in my mind I renamed it to The Cycle of Yawn), and the series had a finality, sort of, with the third book, so I don't have to read 14 books to get to the end of the story (*cough*Wheel of Time*cough*). I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, really, even if it wasn't completely bad. It was bad, though.

What starts as a slightly humorous book about the differences in perspective between the Chinese and the Western world turns into a deep insight into the raw psyche of women. That's not a nice place, BTW.

The thing that pops up immediately is the style of the English language in which the book is written. Xiaolu Guo creates this character who is a female Chinese coming to England on a year long visa to learn the language so she can get a better job in her native country. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is written as her diary and, true to character, her English is really bad, but getting better, so that at the end of the book it is rather decent. Some things that Zhuan, the protagonist, is thinking are sometimes really funny, but sometimes feel really artificial, so much so that I scoured the Goodreads reviews of Chinese people to see if there were many exaggerations and it seems that the verdict is NO! In that respect, the book shocks a European by how weird the mindset of a Chinese country woman can be, so I consider it a win to have read it.

Also, the book is rather short, so unless you really dislike something about it there is no reason to not finish it up once started. However, the starting premise of the book is immediately changed when she meets this older Englishman, who lives life by the day, dabbling into art that he doesn't really care about and making ends meet by driving a transport van, which he hates. However he is well educated and, besides boning the young Chinese girl, also doubles as her English tutor. So it turns into a love story. But wait, it's not all roses, as her perspective over life (the woman that takes care of the household and makes babies and the man who provides for the family) is completely at odds with his views on intimacy, privacy and personal goals.

In the end, I have to say that if you want to start hating the relationship you're in, you should read this book. Like the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, the two characters in the book are complementary, but separate, archetypes of the male and the female and the great attraction between them cannot nullify the classical disparities on their value systems. I don't know about women, but as a man I started to hate the pitiful neediness that Zhuang was exhibiting and I totally understood how the distance between the two people grew. I despaired when I read her thoughts on her own actions, when she knew what she was doing was hurting him and their relationship, but she found herself unable to stop.

What's worse is that, being archetypes, none of the characters compromises in any way, so I believe the reader is then faced with their own failings, but also with their compromises, laid bare, made evident and seeding regret. In that regard, it is a brilliant book. It pits West against East, male vs female, real vs ideal. It's not for everyone though. While I do not regret reading it, I don't think I would have read it if I really knew what it was about.

I am going to go ahead and say that I didn't like Glasshouse. To be fair, after the amazing achievement that was Accelerando, my expectations from Charles Stross were quite high, but I believe this book was quite frankly badly written.

The story is set somewhere in the distant future, after "the Acceleration" which permits easy transport and energy generation through wormholes that instantaneously and safely connect two points in space. This permits creation of anything from pure energy that is just harvested directly from stellar coronas, for example. This further allows for people to choose their bodies at will, making them male, female, changing the shape, the functionality, the species, etc. While being 3D printed like this, one can also make modifications to one's brain and thought patterns. Software, like malicious worms, can infect "gates", the machines that record and create matter, and proliferate through the brains of victims that unwittingly went through those gates.

So far so good. The hard sci-fi background set, I was expecting something amazing. Instead, it's about some whiny person who gets into an experiment to recreate the "Dark Ages" (read "our present") in order to fill in knowledge gaps of the period and discovers he got more than he bargained for. I thought that the idea of the book was to describe the present through the eyes of an Accelerated person, revealing the ridiculousness of the rituals and hard set ideas that hold us back - and it certainly started like that - but in the end it was impossible for Stross to keep up with it and everything devolved in a silly detective story that made no sense in any period, especially the far future.

My review thus denounces this book as clumsy, both in the chaotic change of direction and pace and in the writing style. The only good thing about it: it was rather short.

If Adam Nimoy's name sounds familiar to you, it most likely is you recognized his last name. Yes, he is Leonard Nimoy's son and, ironically, he sounds as happy as the son of Spock probably would have sounded. However, My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life is not, as one might expect, a whining account of what it means to be the offspring of a celebrity, but a heart wrenching anecdotal account of Adam's personal life, going through parenting, addiction, divorce and trying to pull himself together. The book is a collection of very short and stand alone chapters which feel like, and probably are, Alcoholic Anonymous stories about himself, just as raw and open as one might expect from the floor of a meeting of people following the 12 step program.

My personal opinion is that I absolutely loved it. As any good autobiography, it teaches something beyond a mere story, it reveals. I enjoyed the book not as a Star Trek fan, but as a human being. This stuff is not easy to get, at least not for me. I recommend it highly.

Not as complex as Daemon, Kill Decision still manages to impress, thrill and terrify with the very believable subject matter. As for the other two previous books by Daniel Suarez also covers the subject of technology disrupting the political and economical makeup of our society, this time focusing on unmanned autonomous killing drones and it also draws ideas from multiple very real and very interesting scientific fields.

I don't want to spoil anything, but it is mostly a book about the good underdogs fighting the all powerful bad guys, so in that sense it is most like FreedomTM than Daemon. It doesn't have a twist in the middle of the story, either, changing the perspective of the subject matter, it is a simple and by the book (pardon my pun) technological thriller. Perhaps that sounds a little disappointing, but it was a fascinating book and I finished it in mere days while also travelling abroad and visiting Italian cities.

I highly recommend it, not so much for the story directly, as for the multitude of subjects it touches, the sense of eye opening knowledge and the terrifying feeling that everything that happens in the book is not only realistic, but possibly happening as we read.

FreedomTM is the sequel, or rather the second part, of Daniel Suarez's Daemon, which I've reviewed previously. While Daemon spooked me with its realism, FreedomTM does away with all that and changes both pace, scope and plot. I guess Suarez had this in his head from the beginning of starting the book, but I didn't see it coming. Be warned, if you have not read Daemon, this review is going to have some serious spoilers.

You see, from a technological thriller, the book directly goes into socio-economic commentary and from a dumb AI engine that treats the world as a computer game, we get an Agent Smith Emperor of Dune kind of thing, which recognizes humanity as the scourge it is and assumes the role of the solution. Suspension of disbelief is almost impossible as you see "the good guys" surviving death (repeatedly), the bad guys being bad just because they can and being defeated with deus ex machina kind of solutions, and technological solutions solving every problem humanity ever had or could have. FreedomTM is the software developer's wet dream, where the algorithm that rules all other algorithms is not only possible, but implemented and bug free.

That doesn't mean that the book is bad. Far from it. I liked it a lot. However, compared with Daemon, it's like an American blockbuster movie cop out from a situation that is dramatic and full of tension: everything is going to be alright. Instead of maintaining the tension and having the reader on the edge of the seat, so to speak, everything gets explained in the first part of the book and the rest is just dedicated to epic conflict. Oh, and some completely unnecessary and quite difficult to believe romance. In fact, quite paradoxically, I will suggest you do not read FreedomTM immediately after Daemon. Instead, live with the daemon inside of your head, let it make you think about possibilities and wonder about what could be coming next, then, maybe, read the second part.

I read this short novel from start to end in under a day. Osamu Dazai writes from the point of view of a sociopathic young man who cannot seem to understand the human condition and fears all people around him, mostly because he expects to be found out at every moment. The title of the book can be translated in several ways, the English one relates to the protagonist's feelings of losing one's humanity, while the literal translation reads as "disqualified from being human", implying a societal judgement. Imagine a Japanese version of The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and you get a good picture of the plot and feel of the book. Both books were written in the same period, more or less, but while Camus probably imagined the character, many believe Dazai was talking about himself - he committed suicide soon after.

No Longer Human is the second best rated Japanese book and was adapted in movie and manga. It is difficult to imagine those being better than the dry accounting of the inner turmoil of the character, starting as a little boy who devises "clowning" as a method of passing the test of humanity, outwardly fun and good natured and inwardly terrified of being discovered as a fraud and punished by the society of strange human beings that he cannot understand or empathize with. I highly recommend it.

I have been watching horror movies since I was six and read books of all sort through the years, but rarely have I seen something so truly scary as Daemon. Daniel Suarez manages to convey terror not by upgrading the villain, but by making it mundane. The daemon is not an all knowing Artificial Intelligence that takes over the world, but a stupid game engine run by a logic tree. The ease with which something like this could be created makes the book truly terrifying, particularly for me, who has actually thought of the weakness of humans when faced with decisions and pondered a world where machines make the decisions not because they want to rule us, but because we don't want to choose.

But there is more to this book than its subject. It is actually very well written and that is remarkable considering it is Suarez' first book. I will read the sequel to Daemon, Freedom™ as soon as I can. I loved the attention to detail, not a descriptive boring series of useless trivia, but a close focus on what makes people tick and how technology falls into place to fill the gaps that our failings leave. On the cover of the new book that Daniel Suarez wrote there is a quote that I feel is totally true: he is a true heir to Michael Crichton.

Another book that can easily be found in audio format on Librivox and YouTube, Creatures of the Abyss (also known as The Listeners), by Murray Leinster, is a slow mid 20th century sci-fi that reads as a cross between Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft and one of those books about people drinking and falling in love on boats in South America. More Verne, though.

The thing that made me continue listening to it was its way of depicting the mentality from back then. Written in 1961, it tells a story of people who, faced with extraordinary circumstances, first evade formulating a theory in their own head, for fear of contravening their own set view of the world, then - forced by events - they do allow themselves to formulate a theory, but keep it to themselves for fear of ridicule, even when they see other people considering the same things, then they proceed to test those theories by themselves and only then share them with others. Compared with the modern culture of sharing half formed thoughts before they can constitute complete phrases, it is quite different. It is also fun to read about people that think Venus is a large ocean planet, as is Jupiter, with a gravity four times that of Earth.

However, while it was interesting in a sociological way and good as a background for other activities, its slow pace might feel excruciating for the casual reader. More than half of it is more about boats and sailing and catching fish. The science fiction part is slowly creeping into the story and the climax is in the last chapter alone. Maybe my association of the book with Lovecraft is strained, as the only commonality is touching on tentacled abyssal creatures that might appear disturbing to human sensibilities and certainly the elements of horror are very rare in Creatures of the Abyss. The book does feel more real, though, as it goes through this slow process of examination of evidence and formulating hypotheses and testing them before jumping to conclusions. It depicts the beginning of the modern era of scientific thought, back when it was respectable and desirable to be thinking like that.

Bottom line: Slow paced, but very well written, you should at least try it, since it is so readily available. You can even listen to it right here, on this post.

[youtube:IlKJbS4NU1A]

Another great Star Trek novel placed in the Kirk era, Star Trek Prime Directive keeps the reader/listener on the edge of their seat. It starts with a disgraced Kirk, a scattered crew and a scrapped Enterprise. It shows the dark, bureaucratic side of the Federation, cruel and merciless when you are not the lucky wearer of the golden captain uniform or, even better, an admiral. How did it come to this? The answer is both captivating, original and with deep roots in the Star Trek basic tenant: the Prime Directive.

I actually listened to the audiobook, also on YouTube (see embedded video), which was very well narrated. If I had any problems with the story was that it was clearly very biased. Kirk is always thinking of the poor alien species that are like humans, but seems to have no qualms to experiment with phaser fire and even slightly torture other alien beings if they are bug like. Also Spock seems very little a Vulcan in this.

Bottom line is that the idea was intriguing and original and the style of the writing was very good. One of the best ST novels so far.

Star Trek: Strangers from the Sky is an audiobook read by George Takei and Leonard Nimoy. While it is a typical ST The Original Series plot, with god like aliens, travel back in time to significant moments of Earth's history and a focus on high moral values that, in the end, save the day, I felt that it was a little bit more subtle, deeper than a typical episode of any of the series. Was it because of the introspection of the characters, or the wonderful narration of Nimoy and Takei, I do not know. What I can say is that I enjoyed listening to the story quite a lot and I recommend it highly for any Star Trek fan.

I also don't know if it is in the public domain or not, all I can say is that I listened to it on YouTube and so can you:
Of course you cannot listen to it on YouTube anymore. Some lawyers saw to that.

This is the third writing of Esther Friesner that I've read, after The Shunned Trailer and Druid's Blood, both excellent and funny, combining fantasy elements with the present or other realistic historical settings. Gnome Man's Land does the same thing, but I have to say I didn't find it as funny or as good as the others I mentioned. I also attempted to start Here Be Demons, another of her books, but couldn't really enjoy it enough to go past the first chapter. Probably she is one of those authors who, when they are good are really good and when they are not, well...

The book is the first of a trilogy starring Tim Desmond, a young boy of Irish descent who finds himself in a strange situation when the veil between our world and the land of the fey is punctured and more and more fantastic creatures go through. They come and attach themselves to mortals, as many of them are creatures who's very reason for existing is serving their masters. Stuff like banshees, Mongolian ancestors, goblins, kobolds, Greek demigodesses, Russian bath spirits, sprites, elves and so on and so on just sprout from the rupture, bringing annoyance and confusion more than anything. Tim somehow gets tricked into becoming the champion of the Fey on Earth and he does the job mainly because he feels all of these supernatural creatures need his help (plus the girl he secretly loves supports this and his banshee is a hot redhead to boot).

Some hilarity ensues, but often feeling a bit artificial, while the actions of the characters involved are simplistic, inconsistent and dragging on, like the author wanted to tell a joke and she ended up writing an entire book. The crises are not that good either, oscillating between childishly funny and dead bloody serious. The ending was disappointing as well, leaving a very traumatic event just in the wind, like an afterthought, pending Tim's recovery of some of his memory. I really wanted to like the book, too, but in the end I just forced myself to reach the end and I am confident I will not read the other two books in the series. I have some hopes for the Princesses series, which I understand is one of Friesner's better works.

If you were born before the 80s, Ready Player One is going to fill you with melancholy. Ernest Cline combines several classical young adult themes - like a battle versus an oppressive corporate evil, true and pure love, villainy and lack of honor defeated through friendship and good feelings - with (often obscure) geek memes of the 70s and 80s. If you are the kind of person who likes to impress by quoting lines from movies or telling of your adventures in games that are older than your children, this is the book for you. OK, I won't be mean, the book is going to be fun no matter when you were born, but the level of enjoyment may vary.

However, the book is still a young adult book at its core and, besides the overall message that you actually have to make an effort to reach your goals - an often neglected tidbit in young adult books and movies - it reads like one. Young heroes, with enough skill to pass through the challenges of the story, but awkward enough to also be endearing, manage to save the world through the power of their dedication and ideals. Also Chekhov's Gun has been used so much that it left gaping holes in the story. Amazing how random things in the story come perfectly together at the end. Let a bitter Harry Potterish aftertaste.

But let's start with the plot, which is pretty fun. It all happens in a dystopian world where energy reserves dwindled, gasoline became way too scarce and expensive, Elon Musk never happened and most people live their lives in a virtual world called OASIS, created by a brilliant yet reclusive visionary who made sure the system will remain secure and anonymous. Kind of like the Internet, but without the MPAA or the NSA. Yeah, it already sounds like an impossible dream, doesn't it? Well, the maker of the game world dies and leaves his entire estate (hundreds of billions of dollars and complete control over OASIS) to whoever finds the Easter Egg he his inside the game. The heroes of the story are young "egg hunters", while the villains are corporate drones who have been hired to find the egg for their company.

The writing style irked me a little. I know it is Cline's first book, and it certainly was a decent effort, but it had that way of explaining things that I call "fake past" in which the narrator explains things as if he is telling a story from the past. "The OASIS was...". Since this is supposed to happen in the future, it took a while until I could stop feeling irritated by it. However this has the advantage of being very easy to read.

I think it matters a lot if the reader is into cultural references. I could understand some, I could remember some, most of the references in the book, though, were ancient or obscure enough that even I didn't recognize them, and I am a pretty geeky person. I felt rewarded when I could "get it" and frustrated when I didn't, so probably it will be the same for most readers. If you don't care about these things, I think it is better to wait for the movie.

...which is in the works, with Steven Spielberg attached to the project. It might be difficult to put the story on the screen, though, since the book made an effort to describe a future world where everybody is obsessed with this specific period of the late 20th century, kind of like the Star Trek episodes that happened in the past or that required Kirk or Picard to know some specific book from the school curriculum. There is even a Ready Player One web site, that might have some Easter eggs in it (they would be dumb not to program some) but to me it seems both way too geeky and way to social at the same time.

Bottom line: a fun book for geeks. I hope it inspires the younger generations to look at the world a little bit differently, but I don't have my hopes up. My guess is that they will go all 'Meh' on a story that references anything that happened last century.