Yes, I went to bed early last night. And learned that I could have stayed up and watched “The Dancing Men” with Jeremy Brett, the last of the really good Sherlocks.

So I woke up at three. And predisposed to do so, I lay in bed and ran quickly through “The Long war”, the sequel to “The Long Earth”.

Crikey.

And what J. B. Books said was true, it got better and it got worse. Cats are our friends, and dogs- especially beagles- are evil. Overcoming enemies is best done by submitting to them. Using animals- especially bright animals- for careful experimentation is wrong, even if the death of that one animal saves billions of human lives. The really smart are not to be trusted. And everything will be fixed so long as we all work together and share, and oh, by the way, just to repeat ourselves, profiting from your labor is evil.

I’m right with “Cautiously Pessimistic” about the Pratchett thing. The Discworld books were good at least in part because they were relatively color blind, politically. This- and I blame Stephen Baxter heavily for it- this was the most ignorant bunch of crap I’ve seen in a long while. And I bet this is a bloody popular book, because of how extraordinarily well written it is. Nimrods. Anyway, I finished it about seven thirty and was so annoyed I just rolled over and went back to sleep, dreaming about going to war with the liberals using death dealing war accordions. When I woke up the horrible strains of the music were still blowing through my head and I instantly understood Scottish Bagpipe regiments. And now I wish that I could unread this unholy filth.