Or maybe after staring at the fireball, everything seemed to go dark.
“shined like a furnace of blue, igneous fire”. Firstly - “shined”? Secondly - “igneous fire”. Fiery fire?
“tinted the color of a golden rod”. So - gold?
“The sky darkened to a hue of violet.” So - violet?
“walking down a velvet isle” - Sounds very soggy.
Only tripped over the relevant thread this morning but it does sound like this is a guy born on third base thinking he ran the ball in for a touchdown
“Bashful as a tomato in summer?” What the hell is he talking about? Everyone knows tomatoes are flaming extroverts and will talk to anybody. Bell peppers are the vegetables that are shy and reticent.
Now I’m wondering if this is some weird sci-fi Veggie Tales fan fiction. He should have gone edgier, Fifty Shades of Tomato.
Yeah, I bet you heard that from the grapes, those gossips.
The Eye of Argon in Spa-a-a-ace!
Never mind the science – it’s the magnificent similes that distinguish this man’s craft. I wanted to quote a few but they’re pretty much in every second sentence, particularly the first bit that @Darren_Garrison quoted from A Brief Space Opera. They permeate the prose like the mold spores in a piece of Tibetan yak cheese that’s been in the fridge for over a year because you didn’t like it and eventually forgot about. But I mentioned a few in my previous humble critique of this magnificent work, which exceeds in sheer similetic excellence the best writing in the Bulyer-Lytton archives. Notice how the writers below all made commendable efforts, yet somehow never achieved the heights of a true master like our gifted friend:
She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight … summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp’s tail … though the term “love affair” now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism … not unlike “sand vein,” which is after all an intestine, not a vein … and that tarry substance inside certainly isn’t sand … and that brought her back to Ramon.
Just like (or as) a bicycle rider lifts his butt from the seat when he sees a bump coming, so Bob pulled back, emotionally, when Alice got angry.
Though it must be said that Bulyer-Lytton does not lack for charming characters who would be right at home in Space Opera – this one would immediately be hired as a “stewardess” on one of B.K’s gray Lego-textured star cruisers:
She sipped her latte gracefully, unaware of the milk foam droplets building on her mustache, which was not the peachy-fine baby fuzz that Nordic girls might have, but a really dense, dark, hirsute lip-lining row of fur common to southern Mediterranean ladies nearing menopause, and winked at the obviously charmed Spaniard at the next table.
It’s an awkward expression, but it’s not tautologous. Igneous means volcanic, not generically fiery.
So, flammable basalt? Is that a thing?
Make anything hot enough and it will interact with oxygen.
It very much can mean just generally fiery.
I think that usage is archaic. I’ve never seen it used that way, any recent cites? In any event, it isn’t an argument that the expression “igneous fire” is tautologous, I think it’s just an awkward attempt to say volcanic fire.
I just have to interject, I opened the Board after a several hour absence and saw 54 new messages in this thread. I was dreading the inevitable troll feeding party, so I was pleasantly surprised by what had actually transpired.
TroutMan dreaded with great dread opening the thread, knowing he’d see multiple and countless posts, almost too many to be counted, from a troll and all the other posters responding with their own responses. But when he saw the actual posts, the corners of his mouth turned up at the corners, looking like a smile on the face of a smiling man.
This! So much. Last night before I went to bed, I was kind of feeling bad about making such fun of him but then I realized that someone who self-publishes 25 books is just begging for attention. It might not be the kind of attention he wants but that’s tough, like leathery skin on a caramelized burnt brown piece of fake meat grown in the lab of a starship biologist doctor who sings like she remembers the Steve Miller song her grandfather also sang.
Sorry haven’t read the whole thread. Has this bit about BK Neifert been posted?
Mentioned here.
I sense a new Doper meme a-bornin’. At least he gave us that.
(Don’t worry, I won’t go down to the quarry and force the meme on y’all.)
Bold prediction. As bold as an asparagus in autumn.
He also mentioned another stint in prison after confessing something to the police. He didn’t say what it is, but I see that what it is rhymes with gregistered grex grofender.