TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

We, the undersigned, write to express our outrage with the outcome of the "Doctor Who" season composed of episodes 214 to 223.

There were those who held out hope that show-runner Steven Moffat had a nifty and satisfying plan to resolve the season's primary opening gambit, which was the killing of the Doctor himself. There was wide-spread appreciation at first for opening a season so audaciously. And along the way, Moffat did himself a service with a strong secondary through-line (though it was somewhat abbreviated and telegraphed, as one can fairly expect in a 13-episode season), by setting to rest the mystery of [...]

Just as Laura Miller has recently suggested, those who are writing a lot don't have much time to read—and so I'm making miserably slow progress with Iain M. Banks' new novel Surface Detail. But I do so far agree with the space ladies of io9: it's excellent, weirdly structured and either ingeniously or callously organized. Here's a brief bit from my allotted fifteen minutes of reading last night that reaffirmed why I am loving it.

Here's a story for you. It's an old story, and it goes like this: There's a place where we're in charge. You've never seen it. You can't visit. It doesn't exist—it's in the future, or it's in the past, or it's just sideways, outside our borders, somewhere no one has been. But us, the girls, we run everything there. There aren't any men. Or: There were men, but we kicked them out. Or even: There are men, but they answer to us. This place is always threatened. This place is always on the verge of being invaded. This place is always just about to change. [...]