Troynovant Teasers:
enticing snippets quoted from assorted
  Reviews,
    Essays,
      Memoirs,
        &  Illuminants

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It was an old world, incredibly old, with a pitted moon and a dying sun and a sky too thin to hold a summer cloud. There were trees upon it but not the trees of yore, for these were the result of aeons of gradual accommodation. They inhaled and exhaled far less than did their distant forebears and they sucked more persistently at the aged soil.  >> Major Ingredients
  

  
There are other intriguing moral lessons in Where the Red Fern Grows. For instance, during a challenge to find a particularly wily raccoon, a local young bully-boy and his bully-hound come to fatal ends while crossing our hero and his dogs. But nobody worries much about accidental deaths; the bully's own family is no more excited than they'd be to see a coon fall out of a tree. So that's all right.  >> Where the Red Fern Grows
  

  
I specified that what counted as a rational philosophy was any system of beliefs that included an objective reality independent of the human mind; thus, a Thomist Catholic, a Lockean, or a adherent of the scientific method could be counted as rational, while a fideist Christian or a logical positivist would be irrational. To add nuances, I allowed a basically rational character to have a False Premise, such as belief in God or duty to one's family. Three of the five player characters had such beliefs.  >> Campaigning in the World of Atlas Shrugged
  

  
If the fate of freedom turned then on a hinge of resolve, it was Churchill who turned it.  >> Five Days in London, May 1940
  

  

1. I am an average American citizen.
2. I am also a moron.
3. I can buy a gun.
4. With a gun, I am a danger to myself, my family and my community.
5. I shouldn't be allowed to own a gun.
6. Therefore, no American citizen should be allowed to own a gun.
   >> Guns Aren't Psychic
     

  
David Seabury, author of How to Worry Successfully, suggests that you write a "Worry Play", an actual play in acts and scenes about your anxieties, and that you imagine this on stage. Thurber's attempt at this "ran almost as long as Mourning Becomes Electra"; his thinking and dreaming about this Worry Play itself added anxieties — naturally.  >> Let Your Mind Alone
  

  
Dear Diary: Here I am, after two arduous years on the Moon with the Garner lunar expedition. We dismantled our rocket to build the living quarters and labs, and the relief ship has just crashed. Since we're on the Dark Side, it will be at least a month before Earth would know, and at least eight months before another ship could be built. We have only enough oxygen and water for two months, and food for little more. What now?  >> "The Moon Is Hell"
  

  
Little Fuzzy looked the can over, decided that the lid was a member of the class of things-that-screwed-onto-things and got it off. The inside of the lid was mirror-shiny, and it took him a little thought to discover that what he saw in it was only himself. He yeeked about that, and looked into the can. This, he decided, belonged to the class of things-that-can-be-dumped, like wastebaskets, so he dumped it on the floor. Then he began examining the stones and sorting them by color.  >> Little Fuzzy
  

  
It is useful that your territory be recognized by the United Nations as independent. If you were conquered by someone and still held, whether recently or long ago, you may be out of luck. Your benefactor nation may grant you status as an "autonomous satellite nation" or some such euphemism, whereby it gains an additional controlled seat in the United Nations. You won't earn much income from your postage stamps and other privileges of sovereignty, because outside the United Nations bureaucracy, most people won't believe you're an independent nation. However, your territory may gain useful publicity.  >> Postage-Stamp Countries: .cc - .to - .tv - .ws etc
  

  
This August 1928 cover is shown in full color (mostly red and yellow) in Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years, without explanation. That is unfortunate, because readers will automatically assume that the Amazing cover, by Frank R. Paul, illustrates Nowlan's story, and shows Buck Rogers in action. But the man on the cover, doing tricks with a flying belt, is not Buck Rogers.  >> Amazing Stories, 1926-1995
  

  
Now, if I were to wish for a novel that was about twice as long as Flint so there's more room for development — written by someone who also knows and loves the deserts of the American West — and written by someone who also can write first-rate Western adventure set in the years after the Civil War — and written by someone who on top of all that can write heart-in-the-mouth suspenseful romance, thoroughly sexy and sensuous as could not be done in the classic Westerns — then I'd wish for  >> Reckless Love.
  

  
The waltz era gave us a great burst of romantic joy in its most classical musical expression. If the waltz perhaps is not quite the birth of gaiety from the spirit of music, certainly the waltz embodies, in its most beautiful form, the whirl of classical gaiety on the romantic dance floor. >> Johann Strauss, Father and Son
  

  
In our real world or in a fairly portrayed alternate history, we deal not only with warriors. Grantville is not an Argo filled with Greek heroes of legend sailing into unknown waters. These are regular American folks, with the usual proportion of women and children. A healthy society must cherish and protect its pregnant women, not just cheer its bold fighting men. But is there room for heroines, or must women be either coddled or victims? Is it an accident that the modern West, and American values, have best allowed women, even pregnant women, to defend themselves? >> 1632

About our overlayered structure for this Troy-town maze of cultural stratigraphy — at Troynovant an entry is a review of book or story, of film or reel or soundie, if largely about a particular title; a glance or counterpoint to an article or curiosity is an illuminant; a folly mines a vein of humor, or if more pointed a satire; a memoir is a firsthand reminiscence; a postcard showcases a flat-carded Scene of Passage; a compilation gathers quotations stoking Trains of Thought; otherwise generally an essay.