WSoD

I seem to be recovering somewhat, but I'm still badly congested. We'll see how tomorrow looks.

I finished Wintersmith, but can't find my copy of I Shall Wear Midnight, so the Aching reread is on hiatus. On a whim, I began rereading the Silence Leigh trilogy by Melissa Scott. It was the first Scott I ever encountered, and I remember it as a decent though not enthralling read. But I just hit a scene which takes chips off the old Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Silence's ship has just arrived in the Delos system. On approach, Silence is enthralled by the view: "All of Delos was a city, or so the books and films said, a single vast urban area that filled every available meter of solid land and spilled out into the ocean which they farmed so assiduously." OK, so, in the absence of forests and grasslands, how is oxygen getting back into the air? Huge quantities of highly photosynthetic seaweed? High-tech alchemy (appropriate in this setting)? Problem...

A bit later, Silence is considering her wardrobe. She thinks of her drabness compared to "the flamboyant star-travellers, merchant captains and adventurers all, who populated this world". Uhh... is that all? No cooks, launderers, shoe-shine men? Plumbers, police, postal workers? This is Planet of Hats territory. (She does later think about bankers and branch offices, presumably with managers, so maybe there will be people who can compete with her in drabness.)

Oh, well. Nothing stays the same.