Sometimes one slips through

[jhetley]

Okay, I'm reading along all innocent and relaxed, and I come across this fossil in the story. A spiral trilobite. Ten million years old.

Clunk.

Guess the author, editor, and copy-editor all need a refresher course.

As the man said, "God is in the details."

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid to ask about the author of the story.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Not gonna. Author sells a lot more books than I do.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Quantity is never better than quality.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Quantity, OTOH, usually pays better.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Using that knowingly could make an interesting story. That fossil isn't supposed to be that new; what happened? (My immediate thought: a careless time traveller found it in his time machine's refrigerator, remembered that he hadn't liked the trilobites he'd cooked, stopped on his journey home, and threw it out.)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

You'd still have to deal with the spiral aspect...

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

In Emma Bull's War for the Oaks and in Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon, there are references to the disease which killed so many of the Dutch elms in the US.

In Brian Aldiss's "Basis for Negotiation," the US President announces that there's a shield against nuclear weapons which will protect all of North America -- not just the US, but also Canada.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

The Dutch elms show up in a lot of places. I even ran across that one in a magazine that shall remain nameless. Professionals in the naturalist business, they should have known better.