13 things I learned from books

But which books? See if you can guess… (Hint: They’re most­ly SF.)

1. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door sales­men, and no one knows why.
2. Forc­ing grunts to swear at their supe­ri­or offi­cers is a stu­pid way to build morale.
3. If every­thing is infi­nite­ly improb­a­ble, then every­thing is equal­ly probable.
4. If the Fast Burn is itself tran­scen­dent, and unhap­py with the direc­tion of the channedring, it may attempt to hide the jumpoff birthinghel. Also: Hexa­po­dia is the key insight.
5. Grey-green alien skin requires a lot of soap.
6. Even miss­ing the index and mid­dle fin­gers of his right hand, Roland is a hell of a shot.
7. Give praise to the day at evening, to a blade when tried, and to ice when over it.
8. “Anath­e­ma” looks like a girl’s name if you’ve nev­er read a dictionary.
9. If your full name has twelve words in it, most peo­ple will for­give you if you go by “Phaethon”.
10. If your full name is “Hiro Pro­tag­o­nist”, you can bet your par­ents had some kind of weird relationship.
11. One does not out­run a sub­stance that explodes at 15,000 feet per sec­ond. Also, if you’re count­ing on the police to save you, best not to antag­o­nize them while you’re sit­ting on a bomb.
12. “Chuck” and “toss” are per­fect­ly valid instruc­tions in a cookbook.
13. No mat­ter how inter­est­ing the many-uni­vers­es-bridged-by-jump-gates premise may be, I can only read a book with that many near-rape scenes once. And it was a rough slog at that.

These are all off the top of my head, by the way. And yes, some are repeats.