Tactical Highlighter #23

I know I promised last week that I’d do the second part of my horror special. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait one more week. I found too much great regular stuff to show you.

Also, for my fellow cooking fiends, there’s a great no-knead bread recipe up on Stepcase Lifehack. They claim it takes one minute of work. As anyone who has tried comparing prep time estimates on recipes to reality, that’s utter crap. However, I’d estimate the total amount of work time was in the range of twenty minutes. They’re a little vague on what spices should go on top. I’m rather fond of Cayenne and a few random other toppings. The bread is done when a fork or spoon thumped against the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow.

I’ve tried it myself and this is great tasting bread that takes less prep time than any other recipe I’ve ever used. And no evil bread machines required. Just about anyone can make it, and if you have yeast on hand, you probably have all the ingredients you need for it.

• Child’s Play by William Tenn. I’m not too familiar with Mr. Tenn’s work, but one of my favorite SF radio programs from the past was called Dimension X and featured at least one of Tenn’s stories. I heard Child’s Play for the first time the other day thanks to SFFaudio linking to the episode. It’s a great bit of SF with an interesting and unintentional exposé of the misogynistic prejudices of the past.
• Willpower by Jason Stoddard (Dunesteef). This is one of my favorite stories of all time, and it’s the primary reason I’m going against my previous schedule. There are some parts that are a little hard to understand as far as the concepts go, but it’s a great story and the commentary by Rish and Big at the end helps to explain a lot of the more complicated bits.
• Bridesicle by Will McIntosh. This episode of StarShipSofa has two great things going for it. At two minutes and thirty seconds, Mur Lafferty has a great editorial and at 1:01:30, Will McIntosh’s story Bridesicle starts. If this one doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’ve got problems. This story explores the emotional depths that Science Fiction is capable of.
• What Fluffy Knew by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A story for cat lovers and fans of pure distilled awesome.