It's too easy, the tide of war washing these feckless, smiling girls up, drowning Edith in the bile and brine of the past. And she's hardly old, not yet. Not yet. She shakes her head tiredly. Women's magic, she says, is like everything else. Not good enough for girls these days.

[Y]ou have to be open to the fact that your ideas today are not necessarily going to be your ideas tomorrow. And what seems like it's going to work today may not necessarily be what works tomorrow. You cannot get too dogmatic.

Not long ago, a friend forwarded a rather nostalgia-inducing link to me: the Top 100 Sci-Fi Books list . . . . In the spirit of controversy-baiting list-makers everywhere, I present a list of books that I point to as examples of how to do something right.

Copper shackles dazzle from their unzipped nebulas.