Oolite Bulletins

It's Emprise by Michael Kube-McDowell ... not one I know, I have to confess!

Good timing, Disembodied, I was just about to post a nice clue.

Quite correct, it is 'Emprise', part of 'The Trigon Disunity'... a very good read!

It sounds interesting ... I'll need to see if I can get hold of a copy.

OK, name the book and author:

A narrative split across three characters: one based in the UK and the USA in 1999, featuring a physicist/serial killer, who thinks he's being hunted by an alien horror; a run-down spacebum in a backwater planet near the edge of a vast space-time anomaly, who's pursued by debt-collectors; and the cybernetically altered pilot of a stolen, bleeding-edge warship prowling the fringes of the same anomaly, who's being chased by just about everybody. Both the spacebum's and the pilot's stories are set in the same timeframe, in the 25th century.

Clue time: the book was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clark award in 2003.

Since others are diving into Google, so shall I!

The tome in question is Light by M John Harrison.

Sounds very good, actually.

Score! And there's nowt wrong with using Google, I think ...

Light is a staggering book. It's not always pleasant, by any means; it's often brutal and bewildering and you don't even get the comfort of a character to identify with, really. It's just about the most alienating thing I've ever read – but since this is the point of this book (and the point of a lot of SF in general, to remove readers from the everyday and fling them into the strange and unknown) this is part of what makes it so great. There's an intelligent review online here, with a link on to an extract from the book.

Snap! That's the site I read about it on.

Anyway...to the next question. I've ran out of books and films, so I'm delving into one of my hobby areas - webcomics!

In this series of tales, a space station at the event horizon of a black hole allows travel in all parallel universes. The story follows two travellers who manage to get themselves lost in these universes and are doomed to randomly hop around the dimensions hoping that the next hop...will be the hop home...

I would like the name of the comic and the names of the two creators!

Related to a question earlier, xkcd posted this comic today:

http://xkcd.com/721/

No-one wants to answer this? Have I offended thee?

OK a clue, since you asked so nicely... The main characters in the comic are named after sci-fi actors. One is called Llewellyn (after Robert Llewellyn from Red Dwarf).

It seemes tvtropes was blocked by our IT-people, or else I would have identified it by now.

Is it "Jump Leads", by Ben Paddon and Jjar?

The master of the internet search strikes again! It is indeed Jump Leads.

Highly recommended, too. The background stuff for it is about as detailed as Oolite.

Over to the brain in a jar. Or a Jjar if you like puns.

OK, let's try something a bit different. See if anyone can identify the author of the passage below:

"You're worried about something," his wife told him. Nikolai shook his head. "Yes, you are," she persisted. "You're upset because of that deal I made in pirate contraband. You're unhappy because our corporation is profiting from attacks made on your own people."

Nikolai smiled ruefully. "I suppose you're right. I never knew anyone who understood my innermost feeling the way you do." He looked at her affectionately. "How do you do it?"

"I have infrared scanners," she said. "I read the patterns of blood flow in your face."

Judicious use of quote-googling will bring it up, I'm sure, but I also think people might be able to guess the author from the style ...

20 Evocations by Brian Sterling

My google search said Schismatrix, same author.