Wow.

I winced. The purpose of this kind of submarine was a little embarrassing to explain to an alien. [Actually, Ax, it's a military submarine. See the rows of hatches along the back? It's a nuclear missile sub. There's a missile under each of those hatches. Armed with a nuclear warhead.]
      [Ah. I see.]
      [It's deterrence. You know, in case the enemy uses nukes on use, we have these safe on our subs,] Marco explained.
      [What enemy?]
      [Well... okay, we don't exactly have one right now,] I said, feeling fairly idiotic. [But we used to. And we may get one again.]
      [We're shopping at all the sales,] Marco said brightly. [Enemies "R" Us, EnemyMart, J C Enemy. Don't worry, we'll find one.]

- Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs, K. A. Applegate, Scholastic: 1998.

1. These books are actually fairly smart.
2. This was a really shocking passage to re-read in 2009.

(no subject)

Question of the day: why is there so little work on Enid Blyton (that I can find browsing multiple databases, anyway) and why is David Rudd's book out of print and 124 pounds? I feel like I HAVE to cite him because he asked me a question at the DWJ conference and I didn't give him a good answer (so, even though he obviously will never read this, I want my paper to give a solid answer*) I thought The Lion and the Unicorn would have at least something, but turns out, no!

*His question was "Don't you think your reading of Anne and George is way too facile" (paraphrase) and my answer is going to be the same now as it was then, "No," but with more quotations to back it up. Although, really, he seemed to be an Anne fan, so.