David Brin writes:

Next time you reread LOTR, count the number of powerful beings who are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of power would allow themselves to be.

Er . . . one? And that’s rationalized in the story; Sauron was as pretty as any Elf until he lost a big chunk of his power. What am I missing?

Remember also one hobbit’s comment on meeting Strider that if he were a badguy he ought to “look fairer and feel fouler.”

Wincanton (Somerset) twins with Ankh-Morpork (Discworld). (Relayed by Richard Alexander on anarchysf.)

. . a story that legitimately contains the phrase “Harry Potter nude”.

2006: daisygrrl.com has died, but this appears to be the same fanfic.

Teller doesn’t talk, but he writes. His story A Memory of the Nineteen-Nineties, a sequel to Max Beerbohm’s “Enoch Soames” (which I read sometime in the Eighties), almost makes me wish I’d thought of making the same pilgrimage.

Teller’s account is now behind the subscribers-only gate, so I’ll summarize. Enoch Soames “was” a minor writer who sold his soul for an opportunity to see what his reputation would be after a hundred years. The Devil brought Soames to the British Library on a specified date in 1997, then returned him to his friends in 1897. Teller (and a few others, independently) went to the Library on that date to see if anything would happen. Something did.

Soames reported that everyone in 1997 wore numbered yellow jumpsuits, if memory serves; but Teller did not touch on that point.

Periodic Table of Science Fiction: Michael Swanwick is writing a short-short story for each of the elements, one a week.

Harry Potter – Pampered jock, patsy, fraud. By Chris Suellentrop. (Thanks to Michael Travers for the link)

An amusing catalog of literary sins. (Blogged just now by Cory Doctorow.)