A curious coda about Halting State

[elfs]

I joked the other day about how the ending of Halting State had a really bloody obvious ending.

My boss is a slim woman in her mid-20s with the high-intensity of a serial entrepeneur. Today, she showed up at work with a massive bruise on her right bicep. I asked about it, and it turns out she's studying swordfighting. So the ending of Halting State wasn't so kooky after all.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Presumably with Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Weirdly: NS & GB are into European mediaeval longsword.

So are a whole bunch of folks around Edinburgh, some of whom are scarily research-oriented to such an extent that NS has heard of them. It's a quasi-fannish community, and the only reason they haven't met up is the 6000 miles in between. Growing fairly rapidly from a very small base, very high quotient of geeks involved (because mediaeval German longsword is rather ... esoteric?)

I know these people IRL, hence the appearance in "Halting State".

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the "Seattle Western martial arts club" thing is what I was referring to in my comment---somebody mentioned it in the context of explaining what the deal with Mongoliad was.

Edinburgh has better terrain for it, from what I recall. Perhaps an exchange program is in order.