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Recent fic (mostly Babylon 5) on AO3

I reposted some of my longer 3 Sentence Ficathon fills on AO3.

An Immodest Proposal (Babylon 5)
State of Change (Babylon 5)
Hypotheticals (Gattaca)

And a new B5 fic, written a little while back because I had the idea, but not posted until now:

Reliquary (Babylon 5, post-canon, canon compliant, character deaths)

Reposted under the cut.

( Reliquary - Babylon 5 - 1500 wds )

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There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (SCP Foundation)

This book is hard to tag - it's basically cosmic horror, or horror scifi. It is also one of the creepiest and trippiest things I've read in a long time and maybe ever.

I kinda vaguely knew about SCP as a collaborative wiki project from the 2000s, with user-submitted descriptions of imaginary (and frequently extradimensional) objects. This book is based on it. It's about a group of characters who work for the Antimemetics Division of the SCP Foundation, a department most people don't know about (because it's impossible to remember it for more than a few minutes after finding out about it) that handles "antimemes," which are the opposite of memes - if memes are catchy and transmissible, antimemes are intentionally unmemorable, to an extent where you need to use extraordinary measures, such as memory-enhancing drugs, just to recognize that they exist at all. It's information that functions as anti-information. And it turns out there are living creatures with antimemetic properties, as well as weapons that use it ...

( Lots and lots of spoilers )

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just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and flowers

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: calm

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doctor who,
telly

Doctor Who: Inferno (3rd Doctor, Season 7, 1970)

Cavendish and I are watching a lot of retro TV at the moment, most recently some of the Classic DW box sets we treated ourselves to for Christmas.

Yesterday we finished "Inferno", which took me by surprise with its outstanding dark B horror movie qualities and memorable guest characters. No wonder the adventure's script writer Don Houghton later wrote several feature films for Hammer Films.

As a 3rd Doctor adventure, "Inferno" starts out pretty regular with Three, still earthbound and working with UNIT, acting as scientific advisor to an ambitious drilling project (German-last-name-bearing mad scientist included) aiming at piercing the Earth's crust to harness energy. Hubris, mutations, death and chaos occur, and finally a TARDIS malfunction which lands Three in a dystopian, fascist parallel universe.

And that parallel universe is easily one of the bleakest things I've ever seen on DW, new series included. Mostly because of how the script tilts and twists the previously established characterizations, with the changes ranging from subtle but consequential (for example the just slightly altered chemistry between Dr. Petra Williams and Greg Sutton) to the really big ones (Liz and the Brigadier, logical and chilling)

Definitely worth seeing.

Oh, and I love Liz Shaw as a companion. Smart, sensible, no nonsense. In her depiction as a female scientist clearly ahead of her time. Too bad this adventure already marks Caroline John's departure from the show.